Lazy's Guide to Top 10% Without Working Nights or Weekends Forum

[OnceUponAMemo]

Basically my whole "study group" did something very close to this last year and we did pretty well all things considered. I would just add that the only class I made my own outline in was also my worst grade. I do not think it is necessarily advisable to make your own outline from scratch. This takes a lot of time just typing and retyping the same info. I far preferred getting a lot of outlines from 2Ls and 3Ls (You Fordham kids are welcome to hit me up anytime), finding the one's I liked best, then supplementing them throughout the semester. At the end, my outline often did not look much like the past outline, but instead of spending wasteful hours typing up the same black letter law or basic outline details, you are memorizing your outline and adding the year by year specific things to get an edge on exam day.

Otherwise great guide.

[Xifeng]

I really like this guide.

[twairlines]

I know this guide doesn't guarantee success, but neither does any other guide available. However, I do think it is very helpful in that there is some hope for those of us who want to still enjoy life. Thanks again, great guide!

[T14]

Thanks for the guide

[nelaw2010]

Great guide!

Not really lazy, just efficient, effective, and highly focused. However, I do think that the "lazy" title will get a lot more hits than efficient or effective.

Thank you!

[crumpetsandtea]

This is seriously awesome. Tagging for when I need it someday in the (sort of) distant future. Thanks, OP.

[corvettekid]

didn't have time to read the entire thing, will finish later

[auntjulia]

This guide looks great... thank you, lazy

[eyedub]

Thanks for the guide

[Lazy]

What school range did you attend? Are you considering transferring?

I attend a T20. Although I realize that transferring up to a T6 or (if a higher being smiled upon me) a T3 would help my job prospects, I decided that I'd rather gamble with a lower debt-load (since I have a substantial scholarship at my school). So no transferring for me.

[Lazy]

Basically my whole "study group" did something very close to this last year and we did pretty well all things considered. I would just add that the only class I made my own outline in was also my worst grade. I do not think it is necessarily advisable to make your own outline from scratch. This takes a lot of time just typing and retyping the same info. I far preferred getting a lot of outlines from 2Ls and 3Ls (You Fordham kids are welcome to hit me up anytime), finding the one's I liked best, then supplementing them throughout the semester. At the end, my outline often did not look much like the past outline, but instead of spending wasteful hours typing up the same black letter law or basic outline details, you are memorizing your outline and adding the year by year specific things to get an edge on exam day.

Otherwise great guide.

I think that using old outlines can work too, even though that wasn't what I did, so long as you're actively adding to and altering them (as you did). Thanks for adding on to the knowledge in this thread!

[soupisgood]

Love this... thanks OP!

[justhockey31]

Love this... thanks OP!

[Grizz]

tl;dr

too lazy

[DreamsInDigital]

OP you are amazing. You just made me feel 10 times better than I was previously feeling (and considering orientation starts in a week, that is a really good thing for my mental health.)

I always thought it was kind of crazy how much work people said you HAD to put in (14 hour days, 7 days a week) and I always hoped that if I treated it like my current job I would end up ok. This makes me think there's some hope.

[keg411]

Awesome guide and pretty close to what I did my 1l year. I wouldn't even call it lazy, I call it efficient.

+1. Though not exact, this is the closest guide I've seen to what I actually did and it paid off for me as well.
Maybe it should be "the splitter's guide to 1L" .

[3ThrowAway99]

too lazy; didn't read

[birdlaw117]

too lazy; didn't read

[traydeuce]

This is exactly what I've done en route to the top 1% of GULC, except that I don't take notes. Probably a couple other discrepancies*, but I was too lazy to read thoroughly. Not taking notes is a little extreme and I don't particularly recommend it, but to the 0Ls/1Ls out there, OP's approach is actually the correct way to learn the law. Supplements exist for people who don't really get it and need some Wikipediaized version of what they read in their books. Which is nice, but you can't get As spouting out Wikipedia law. What you need to do to succeed - and ALL you need to do to succeed - is to read the cases, get the cases, outline the cases. "Blackletter law" in supplements, random digressions in class, lame exam-taking acrostics - all totally unnecessary and/or irrelevant. You read the cases, you learn the cases, you apply the cases to, compare the cases with, and distinguish the cases from the facts you are given on your exam, and you - if you do that right - will do well. Don't buy outlines, don't buy outlines of cases, don't listen to tapes, don't borrow upperclassmen's outlines that make everything so crystal clear. All this will detract from your personally engaging with the material and result in an exam that's a series of blurted-out rules. Legal rules are porous, amorphous, highly fact-sensitive things. (Usually.) You need to understand (a) where they came from - what concerns are driving them, and (b) how they got applied to the facts in the cases in which they were created, or have been subsequently applied. For example, you will see, in 1L, a lot of 3-factor tests, 4-factor tests; it is almost always the case that one or two of those factors matter the most and two of them are just junk. But the court never comes out and says so; you see it in how the test actually gets applied. So an A exam will be like, "yeah, the Court totally said in Mueller that the existence of public school recipients makes a tax break that primarily goes to religious school students' parents more constitutional, but in reality if you read Mueller, only 1% were public school kids, so that factor of the test doesn't really matter so much and it doesn't matter here that no one's in a public school." But a B exam will be like, "there's a twenty-factor test in Mueller that I took down from a supplement and factor (k) is public school recipients, and that cuts against the state here but b through f cut in favor of the state so gee, I don't know, close case."

* Yeah, there is one big discrepancy - I don't take notes on the reading. What I do, and this is the ultimate lazy way to go, is the following. I read the case. I'm a very critical person, so usually as I read the case I make notes in the margin about why certain reasoning is flawed. You don't have to do that, but that sort of critical engagement with the law can help a lot. Often, exam questions are posed at the weak or ambiguous spots of a case, so if you've already thought about what those are (many of my comments in my book are some variation on "what the hell does this hopelessly vague language really mean in x circumstance"), you're well on your way. After reading the case, I sometimes write a couple sentences in the margin about how I'd summarize the holding, and, if it's a multi-factor test, which factors are the big factors. It's not a Westlaw headnote-style version of the holding, it's much more of a "what this case will mean in the real world when applied to real facts" summary. Or, sometimes I don't even do that, in which case I do it in the outlining process. Then, at the end of the semester, I either (a) type up all these holdings, or (b) write them up in the book, if I didn't before, and then type them up. That's my outline. Then I look at old exams and review my outline. That's really it.

[Gecko of Doom]

I hope most of you learned in undergrad what note-taking style works best for you. However, given that this is the lazy person’s guide to top 10%, it’s entirely possible that some people reading this have never taken notes before.

Oh hello. Thanks!

[APimpNamedSlickback]

x

[Lazy]

* Yeah, there is one big discrepancy - I don't take notes on the reading. What I do, and this is the ultimate lazy way to go, is the following. I read the case. I'm a very critical person, so usually as I read the case I make notes in the margin about why certain reasoning is flawed. You don't have to do that, but that sort of critical engagement with the law can help a lot. Often, exam questions are posed at the weak or ambiguous spots of a case, so if you've already thought about what those are (many of my comments in my book are some variation on "what the hell does this hopelessly vague language really mean in x circumstance"), you're well on your way. After reading the case, I sometimes write a couple sentences in the margin about how I'd summarize the holding, and, if it's a multi-factor test, which factors are the big factors. It's not a Westlaw headnote-style version of the holding, it's much more of a "what this case will mean in the real world when applied to real facts" summary. Or, sometimes I don't even do that, in which case I do it in the outlining process. Then, at the end of the semester, I either (a) type up all these holdings, or (b) write them up in the book, if I didn't before, and then type them up. That's my outline. Then I look at old exams and review my outline. That's really it.

From the sound of it, the reading notes I take and your margin notes are fairly similar. I think that active engagement and understanding of the assigned readings is key (and can eliminate any need for a supplement).

For me the repetition of continually re-writing has been key, but for those folks who can retain just by reading...Traydeuce's method sounds awesome. Thanks for contributing, Treydeuce!

[wiseguy33]

For the laziest of the lazy among us:

tl;dr Take notes. Study from those notes. Stay on campus all day and study during all of your breaks between classes. Socialize.

[gothamm]

excellent

[tipler4213]

For the laziest of the lazy among us:

tl;dr Take notes. Study from those notes. Stay on campus all day and study during all of your breaks between classes. Socialize.

Thanks for that