How are people studying 14 hours per day? Forum

[Columbia Law]

First semester 1L I studied all day. Sometimes 14 hours. This lasted all semester. I got below the median or below in each class. Second semester I looked up my cases on google/wikipedia BLL and got A/A- in each class. Still fried because of first semester but I have a good job lined up. Take it FWIW.

[Kobe_Teeth]

This comes from vanwinkle in another thread:

The one category, I would say, is "people who learned the material in class, went out on their own and figured out how to take law school exams, and killed exams".

Study BLL all you want, but if you don't practice the other I think you'd be in trouble. I'm a 1L and haven't taken an exam yet so take that FWIW.

[zeth006]

1L here too, and I admit to spending a lot of time at the library. My problem is becoming more efficient and targeting stuff that my profs consider important.

[wesker]

1L here and I'm spending about 1-1.5hrs between classes (lunch break), 3-4 hours a day outside of class and then probably about 9-10 total on the weekends. I also book brief.

edit: my weekend study time includes Friday.

[reasonable_man]

i assume everyone advising against 10-14hour a day studying has made Law Review?

The next time one of the partners at my firm wanders in to talk about an assignment I worked on, before I take his critique; should I ask him if he was on law review before I allow him to speak?

What a tool.

[swc65]

My only question is "What the hell am I supposed to be learning?" The BLL doesn't seem that hard or complicated, yet. However, all the shit that these professors puke out seems like it would be almost useless on a test.

I have also noticed that when professors actually give BLL, nobody takes notes. But when the professor discusses what she thinks the judges were having for breakfast, everyone is writing furiously. Am I missing something? Are we going to be tested on applying BLL or on what the judges had for breakfast.


Edit: Also, WTF is with all these 2l outlines that are nothing but 75 pages of a bunch of case briefs in the order the were given in class. There MUST be a better way to outline than this. I do not think that going through the facts, PP, issue, and then holding on test day will be at all helpful. Wouldn't it be better to outline by subject and put only BLL in the outline? Or am I totally nuts?

[zeth006]

My only question is "What the hell am I supposed to be learning?" The BLL doesn't seem that hard or complicated, yet. However, all the shit that these professors puke out seems like it would be almost useless on a test.

I have also noticed that when professors actually give BLL, nobody takes notes. But when the professor discusses what she thinks the judges were having for breakfast, everyone is writing furiously. Am I missing something? Are we going to be tested on applying BLL or on what the judges had for breakfast.


Edit: Also, WTF is with all these 2l outlines that are nothing but 75 pages of a bunch of case briefs in the order the were given in class. There MUST be a better way to outline than this. I do not think that going through the facts, PP, issue, and then holding on test day will be at all helpful. Wouldn't it be better to outline by subject and put only BLL in the outline? Or am I totally nuts?

Depends on the class, I guess?


Again...I'm just a 1L, so my opinion probably doesn't count for much.


But the typical crim law outline as an example normally consists of roman numeral/numbers followed by the rule, then the mini brief and the BLL that resulted from that case. A little tidbit on policy from my passionate crim law prof never hurts.

If you're like some people here who're actively taking notes that go straight into their outlines, then you're likely to at least jot down a sentence or two of the BLL.

[kalvano]

My only question is "What the hell am I supposed to be learning?" The BLL doesn't seem that hard or complicated, yet. However, all the shit that these professors puke out seems like it would be almost useless on a test.

Same boat...BLL does not seem that difficult at the moment.

I have also noticed that when professors actually give BLL, nobody takes notes. But when the professor discusses what she thinks the judges were having for breakfast, everyone is writing furiously. Am I missing something? Are we going to be tested on applying BLL or on what the judges had for breakfast.

It's because most people have no idea how to take notes, or are too terrified to rely on what they thing the important stuff is.

[Lawrence]

Absolutely not. I'm implying that if you didn't make law review, I don't want your advice. So, I'm assuming that everyone that is telling me not to study hard has made LR.

I made law review. Don't study 10-14 hours a day.

[Lonagan]

i assume everyone advising against 10-14hour a day studying has made Law Review?

I made LR and didn't sniff 10-14 hours a week of studying as a part-time student (while working 50ish hours a week). Some who did much better than I did studied less, others studied more. The only times I put that much time in were weekends before writing assignments were due. I would have liked to have a little more time to study. If I were to go back as a full-time student, I would treat it as a full-time job and focus on school 8-12 hours a day (between classes, meals, studying, meeting with professors, snagging free meals, etc.) during the week and then do any clean-up on the weekends.

Right on, thanks for the advice. What you listed if you were to do full time is pretty much exactly what Im trying to do.

Wait, you're coming up with your own study plan? Have you made law review yet? How can you possibly trust yourself to make studying decisions? I mean you're not even on a secondary journal, much less law review.

[BCLS]

haha there are a few people at my school bragging about studying 10 hours a day. I think it's pretty insane at this point. Save it for closer to exams. For now, 3-5 seem reasonable.

[the lantern]

I'm just a 1L (and so I haven't taken any exams yet) but I figured I'd just say what I'm doing to maybe compare to what others are doing. I usually spend 3-5 hours per day doing school work, not including class time. I usually come in two hours before class and leave about an hour after my last one (and some days I have time to work between classes). I have a legal writing assignment due Friday so I put in a 10 hour day today and I'll probably pull another one tomorrow (and maybe Thursday too).

So far, I haven't done anything on the weekends besides leaf through my E&Es for a little bit here and there. I'm planning on starting my outlines and working on updating them every weekend, but I just feel like we haven't had enough material to start yet. I'll probably spend every Saturday morning outlining for 3-5 hours starting next weekend.

I don't pay much attention to other students (I hide in a corner of the library all day every day) but I feel like I am doing what most students are doing, with a dedicated few putting in drastically more hours than everyone else (btw I hate these people because they ask the dumbest fucking questions in class).

[savagecheater]

I leave class, take a 20 min break, then study until I have a grasp of the material. This typically takes me 3-4 hours for a night's reading.

When I go home I cook myself dinner, eat it, read the news/forums/clear my head, then get out a hornbook/e&e, examine the relevant section, and get the straggler points that my casebook didn't include/was elusive on. On a good day, this is 45 min. On a heavy day, this can be up to two hours. Generally, combining this with casebook reading is about 4.5 hrs, which isn't bad at all.

10-14 has to be inefficient, or they're lying/screwing around.

When you're on facebook/amazon/cracked/wsj/drudge, that's study time you're not putting it...it doesn't 'count' as studying, even if it's in the library.

[mbw]

k, ty.

You do realize that a whole slew of LR competitions are not pure grade-on, neh? Many are write on, or a combination of write-on and grade on... and some (like my school's) are grade on, write on and combo.

So you could be conditioning your view of preferred advice on the belief that the provider of said advice actually achieved some level of GPA-based academic success...

please, carry on...

[stocksly33]

also, some people like myself, have shotty memory. Taking detailed notes, and reading stuff over and over is my only way to remember all this material.

[zeth006]

also, some people like myself, have shotty memory. Taking detailed notes, and reading stuff over and over is my only way to remember all this material.

There's that and there's also just the lack of intuition. Unlike some people I've met, I'm just not a natural at drawing all the connections between cases and connecting the dots. I end up literally transcribing everything the prof says then spending a while sifting through the lecture notes for relevant stuff. I'm told it's a bit early to get all panicky, but it's taking me a while to see how the cases and the non-case readings flow together in a logical progression.

[kasparov]

They might just be saying what time they got to school, and what time they went to bed, and counting all the inbetween stuff as studying. I am a very inefficient worker. I got to school at 9 and got home at 9, and did a little work until 11.

Not counting class time, I'd say i studied about 4 hours.

I mean, I just don't see how you fit 14 hours in the day and go to class as a full time student. Unless you are doing like 6:30am - 11:00 pm. I also don't see how you don't run out of material after three days of doing that, unless you are memorizing the casebook.

[Jackie O]

we shouldn't make fun of the soon to be gorge dwellers

[BarbellDreams]

1L so FWIW, but I have class for bout 4.5 hours per day, after class I take an hour break to eat and watch a show or play a video game and then spend about 4-5 hours tops studying. I have a firm "Be home by 9 pm no matter what" rule and I follow it and half the time am home by 8 and hang out for 3 hours before going to bed. I do this Mon-Fri. Saturday I study 4-6 hours in the morning just doing E&E's and outlines, and then I am done. Sunday I take entirely off to watch football all day. I feel like I understand everything pretty well, have time to do what I want and still cover all assignments. I also sleep 8 hours per night, something most dont do.

Its all about what works for you. The above has worked really well for me so far.

[Oban]

My only question is "What the hell am I supposed to be learning?" The BLL doesn't seem that hard or complicated, yet. However, all the shit that these professors puke out seems like it would be almost useless on a test.

I have also noticed that when professors actually give BLL, nobody takes notes. But when the professor discusses what she thinks the judges were having for breakfast, everyone is writing furiously. Am I missing something? Are we going to be tested on applying BLL or on what the judges had for breakfast.


Edit: Also, WTF is with all these 2l outlines that are nothing but 75 pages of a bunch of case briefs in the order the were given in class. There MUST be a better way to outline than this. I do not think that going through the facts, PP, issue, and then holding on test day will be at all helpful. Wouldn't it be better to outline by subject and put only BLL in the outline? Or am I totally nuts?

Except for a few concepts(rule against perpetuities...), BLL in general isn't challenging and learning it inst really the point of law school. FWIW in most classes we work with common law, when in 9 times out of 10 the situation/fact pattern is resolved by a state statute. When you become a lawyer your job is to figure out the statute and how it applies to the facts. Thus the challenge and point of law school, is learning to Apply the BLL/Statute to the facts, not just learning it. however in order to succeed on exams you need to have learned/memorized the BLL.

So think of the BLL as being necessary, but far from sufficient for success on exams.

But i'm not on LR so feel free to ignore my thoughts.

Paper chase my be inaccurate and silly, but never forget Kingsfield's schpeel: "You teach yourself the law, I teach you to think like a lawyer"

[goosey]

when people say "studying" do they mean reading for class or reviewing materials ASIDE from reading?

[BarbellDreams]

I can only assume they mean both. I read the casebooks, take notes on the casebook, and then go over the supplement. By the time I get to class I have covered the material multiple times and listen to the professor to fill in whatever she adds to it.

[LoriBelle]

I've seen a few people on facebook say they're at the law school for class/studying 10-14 hours per day... How is this possible?

I think you have your answer right there, but let me spell it out for you. If they are on Facebook, they are not studying (at least not to their full potential). It's easy to spend 14 hours a day "doing school work" when 75% of it is really talking to other students, Facebook, LOLCats, shopping for shoes, eating lunch, painting your nails, and checking your investment portfolio. Those who are "studying" 14 hours per day in September probably have a LACK of efficiency and focus, not an excess (though there will be some super-gunner exceptions to this rule).

And yes, to satisfy those who feel it bears on my credibility, I made law review. I'm also in the top 10 people in my class. I never studied 14 hours a day until finals week. My brain is just worthless after about 8 hours of good solid work. My advice, as always, is to figure out what works for you academically, and then do that. That's the real key to success in law school IMO. What everybody else is doing is merely a distraction.

[goosey]

I was in the library for a solid 5 hours today after class and did what I read about on this forum once before ["bill" my time] and realized only 3.5 hours of that were spent on actual studying. The rest went to bathroom breaks, getting my reserve book/laptop security cord renewed since you only get them for 2 hours at a time, refilling my water bottle from the fountain (I drink water constantly and refilled it about 5 times)--so yeah, that put my "study time" into perspective. I wound up reading 8 chapters in the civ pro e&e though, and then spent another hr on the train updating my outline. I am probably going to update some more for another hour and then head off to bed.

I noticed that waking up at 4 am and doing work at that time is MUCH more productive for me than coming home after a long day and attempting to work..and the best use of my time at night is sleep because I am pretty useless after 8 or 9 pm in terms of actual productivity. anything I am going to do at night is a massive waste of time.

but yeah..so i think that brings my days total to roughly 6-7 hours, and thats on a super productive day. Not sure how anyone can manage to do 14 hr days WITH class. doesnt seem possible..theres just not enough hours in the day...18 hrs=class and supposed studying. that leaves 6 for getting to school, showering, eating, and sleep. def wouldnt have time to be posting on fb