I hear that law school reading is exceptionally dense? Is that true? If you have to compare legal texts to something else, what would you compare it to?

Also, if legal reading is tough, what makes it tough? Is the syntax, the vocabulary, or the ideas. Be as specific as possible.

And for someone like me, who will attend law school in a couple of years, what advice do you have for me to start preparing for it all?

Somewhere between Dear Penthouse and Dear Abbey.

Not as dense as your mom.

Read some judicial opinions. If you can understand them, you'll be fine. If you can't, you should probably not attend law school. Beyond that, occasionally a dense law review article will be assigned, but those don't really matter at all.

I'd probably say it is more like philosophy, but it is frequently more entertaining.



For me, it has been the vocab. Once you learn this, the reading becomes easier to finish, although that doesn't necessarily mean that you understand it.



Do well in your classes and have as much fun as possible. Don't bother trying to 'prep' for LS now. Once you start LS you will have plenty of time to focus on learning the law and preparing for class, because that is most likely all you will have time to do.

By judicial opinions, I'm guessing that you mean supreme court opinions?

Also, the cases that you read--are they usually recent cases from the past 50 years or so, or are they old cases?

THIS dense:

Runs the gamut from cases before the US existed to the last couple of years.

edit: also, not just SCOTUS. Appellate courts, state courts. Sometimes lower courts, but not that often.

http://www.courts.state.ny.us/history/c ... f_lirr.htm

This is one of those quintessential law school gems, not necessarily a representative sample of the difficulty level of law school reading, but, I assure you, you'll be reading a bunch of Cardozo opinions your first year...

When I first started reading cases, it was really difficult for me. I found it hard to wade through the language and figure out what it meant. It was taking me an eternity to dissect each case, if I even could at all. Consider with all this that I am an excellent reader and have a degree in English.

However, it was just an issue of adjustment. As soon as I got used to reading legal writing, as opposed to novels in an English class, it became second nature. It didn't take long either. I highlight in my books (I don't brief), and it's almost to the point now where I can just instinctively know to highlight the next sentence before even reading it, if you get what I mean. I now read cases quickly with absolute ease and dense is the LAST word I'd use to describe them. I don't lean on cases heavily, I do a lot of supplemental reading, but they are useful.

Someone gave the advice of trying to read cases and suggested that law school might not be for you if you can't understand them. Excuse my frankness, but that's awful advice. No one in the world without practice or at least an introductory legal education is going to understand them. Expecting a 0L to read it, not be intimidated and not freak out is ridiculous. Please don't not (excuse the double negative) go to law school because you can't understand a case in your 0L year. Not many people will.

It's really not that dense at all.

Depends on the subject-matter, the author, and the editor.

I've read cases from the 90's that took more than an hour to read, and English cases from the 1850's that took twenty minutes.

I would definitely say it's comparable to philosophy, except that you have to read much more closely, there are cases where semicolons really make a difference.

Also note that sometimes casebooks will edit out parts of opinions. And now that I look at what you posted, this case was not one of those cases.

I got palsgraff fairly heavily edited.

I would say that palsgraff is one of the denser cases I've read so far, but it's not the worst, I haven't had property, and some professors LOVE 19th century british cases.

Nope, I've read (excerpts of) cases as early as 733 AD. The common law is a lot older than SCOTUS. The opinions are from SCOTUS, Circuit Courts, state supreme courts, and state appellate courts, and then courts in England every now and then.

lol?

OP, it depends on the judge, when the case was written, how complex the legal issues / facts are, etc. After a while they all look the same though, and you can pick out the cogent from the irrelevant pretty easily.

That's what you'll be reading in class (plus notes that the casebook folks wrote, which can sometimes be cryptic themselves).

Here's a couple of cases we covered in each of my first-year classes:
Civ Pro
Pennoyer v. Neff
Caterpillar, Inc. v. Lewis

Contracts
Dougherty v. Salt
Webb v. McGowin


Property
Pierson v. Post
Moore v. The Regents of the University of California

Torts
Palsgraf v. Long Island RR
American Motorcycle Association v. Superior Court

I just kind of grabbed some form my notes to give you a sampling. Look these up and you'll see the type of stuff you'll be reading.

Good luck!

Many of the cases in Torts are really old, too. I found those more difficult than others because the language is so old-timey. They're not that bad, though. Just different from what I'm used to reading.

Don't scare the 0Ls with Pennoyer v. Neff. That's silly.

Why not? It's the first case we read in my Civ Pro class. I could have been evil and put Asahi. I had a hard time keeping things straight in that one. (:

Because the language of Pennoyer is ancient and annoying. At least Asahi is easier to read on its face.

SolarWind, FTW

3L here:

I will let you 0Ls in on a little secret:
Pennoyer v. Neff isn't good law.

To the original topic:
If you can get through Kant or Heidegger, then legal opinions will look like "see spot run" in comparison.

FWIW: several friends from my undergrad philosophy classes (now in law school) concur. I have been informed that law school readings are much easier than philosophy readings.

+1 Srsly.

I think the toughest stuff I read in undergrad was Julia Kristeva. Philosophy readings are insane.