ned wrote:
If any current students are lurking about, I have a question about course material. When do we find out what we need, and is it available locally or do we need to order it? Is any of it available in digital format? I hate lugging books around. Thinking of digitizing at least some of the reading material so I can go over stuff via iPad during my commute, or wherever, should the opportunity arise....
You can find out most of what you need ahead of time on the website, if you do a search for first assignments. You can buy most of the materials used in the bookstore or on Amazon, though by my 2L year, I had discovered Chegg and was doing it that way. Also, old outlines will be invaluable to you. Your 2L and 3L friends can get them through their journal outline banks, but most of the student affinity groups also post theirs on TWEN if you join. You can download any you need, or get them from friends, so there is no reason to buy them. Some will disagree with me, but the best use of your time is to tweak and rework old outlines, reserving the bulk of your studying for taking and analyzing old practice exams. You can do this with your classmates, and/or with friends on TLS if you need a respite.
As an aside, since you hate lugging books, most profs let you bring a laptop to class, but there are exceptions (and they'll tell you that in the first week of class.) Unless you are supremely disciplined, you should disable your internet access, or you could take notes by hand and type them later. The other thing you can do is determine whether you are likely to be cold called in a given class, and if not, leave your casebook in your locker (or at home.) Nearly everyone brings casebooks to class; I did not, unless I knew I would be called on for something I couldn't reference from my notes.
I hope this helps!