God. You guys are such gunners.
Some thoughts from a current T14 1L:
I would very highly recommend you do
not start trying to study subjects now. Your professors will teach you everything you need to know about each subject over the course of the semester.
I tried reading GTM before coming to law school, and a lot of it didn't really make much sense to me because I'd never seen a law school exam before, let alone studied any of the subjects to get the points being made about them. I also think that if you try to read the E&E's for a subject before starting the semester you'll just burn yourself out. You won't know what parts of the E&E to focus on (your professor may not cover every subject, my Torts professor this semester spent almost no time at all on damages for example) so you'll have to go through the whole thing and end up trying to remember a lot of information you won't even be taught during the semester.
You also run the risk of learning something differently than the way your professor will teach it to you; you really want to try to adhere to your professor's views and terminology (different professors really will refer to the same concepts in different ways). Some may focus on the Restatement more, others may focus on the specific cases in your casebook, and those will be what you need to know and draw from come exam time. The E&Es help to review overall concepts, but they're more effective after your professor has already emphasized what parts you'll need to know and what his take on it is.
Here's what I'd recommend:
A Civil Action - this novel is required reading in some Civil Procedure sections here (thought not mine). It will give you a glimpse into the way a civil action case runs from beginning to end, something you may not be familiar with. (Most pop culture focuses on criminal law, and those shows/movies that focus on civil suits usually don't show much at all of the actual legal process, they just use it as something to drive the plot.)
One L - This Scott Turow memoir is kind of whiny and exaggerated, and people often seem aghast at the way he treats his wife as the burden of law school starts overwhelming him. But it still is a true story about the experience of a 1L with rather good writing skills, and it may be good to read even before you decide which school to go to, because it'll reinforce a concept a lot of people aren't used to before they get to law school: You can't count on being the best where you are because
everyone at your school is going to be the best the law school could recruit. You'll be surrounded by people who are as smart, dedicated, and serious about succeeding as you are
or even moreso, and being graded on a curve will mentally affect you once you get to realize this, even at a less competitive law school. This book is the only thing that could come close to preparing you for that first-semester feeling that you
will ultimately have.
(Side note: Do
not plan on transferring. You have no way of knowing if you can get good enough grades to transfer, no matter what you think, because you are not prepared for the law exam yet. Just stop thinking that right now.)
Thinking Like A Lawyer: A New Introduction To Legal Reasoning - This is what you should be learning before you come to law school. You don't need to know the subject matter before you get here, they'll give you everything you need to do, but you can get a real advantage by learning as much as you can about
how lawyers are supposed to see things. A lot of people struggle with picking this kind of thing up because it's only being given to you subtly over the course of the semester, professors don't just outright come out and give you instruction on this, it's something they assume you learn through case reading. You can get a leg up by trying to teach yourself more about
how to approach the material before you get here, by reading books like these.
LEEWS - If you want to learn about law school exams, this book/audio program is the way to do it. I don't know if it'd make too much sense to someone who hasn't started law school yet, but it'd probably make more sense than GTM at least. You can always hold onto it and go over it about 4-5 weeks into the semester, once you've seen what law school classes are really like and have that experience.
Matthies may be onto something with his book recommendation, also. It's job-hunting time for me and I'm totally unprepared for it. I'm wishing I'd paid a lot more attention to figuring out and planning what I need to be doing now about six months ago, because now I'm so stressed and burdened by exam studying that I don't have the energy to send off job apps at all, even though I desperately need to be doing so. I would recommend you follow his advice (he strikes me as a TLS poster who gives good advice in general, so I trust his book recommendation) or at least find
some resource on finding legal jobs to read either before the semester starts or very early in your first semester.
You will have plenty of time your first couple months of law school. The material starts off pretty slowly and builds up. You'll have a lot of reading to do, but once you go over LEEWS you'll learn the much faster ways to read and record information so you're not spending as much time reading each case. Use that spare time
wisely, as the semester nears an end it'll start running out and you'll wish you had it back.
But those first 6 weeks or so of law school are really when you should be getting into GTM, LEEWS, and any E&Es. That's when you'll have your syllabus, know the scope and angle of each professor and class, and have seen enough of your classes to know what you're supposed to be focusing on and to actually
get the tips and suggestions in the study aids and exam guides.
Enjoy your free time. God, I wish I had the last year of my life before law school back. I'd be out partying every day.