Is this right? Forum

[perfunctory]

I feel like the way to go about 1L is: obtain successful 2L's outlines and edit/add notes as you go, do practice problems, get the concepts down, and practice writing exams the way your profs want eloquently. Reading casebooks and briefing the cases and writing it all down seems like a huge time sink right now. Can I work with other people's outlines and then just make my own near exam time or am I skipping some learning process? I feel like the key is doing this and just working on practice problems to expand my perspective on subjects.

[sublime]

Idk. Maybe.

People work/learn differently. There is no one "right way."

[thesealocust]

Working with old outlines is an awesome strategy, but IMO it's really risky as a 1L to do that and totally ignore reading/briefing. If you haven't struggle-bus'd your way through cases/briefing/outlining, you're likely to be a poor judge of the quality of other outlines/supplements. And it's not like old outlines stop being valuable just because you're doing the work on your own: they give you new perspective and can fill in gaps in your knowledge/attention.

Reading, briefing, and outlining is hellishly time consuming, but like... your 1L grades will open or shut a ton of doors for the rest of your career, is it really the time to cut corners? And most courses will only have a small quantity of quality practice problems availalbe (old exams from your professors or else practice questions they give you directly), meaning the extra time you'd save by skipping the reading won't but you much.

Anecdotally, I know people who stopped reading and did great and people who never read and did great, but I also know people whose grades suffered after they gave up reading. For that reason I find it hard to recommend for fresh 1Ls.

One time saver is focusing your briefs on rules/policies and not on facts/procedural posture/history. A few sentences should suffice, you don't need half a page+ for each case or anything.

[oshberg28]

It seems like you may be looking for a way to do the least amount of work and still reap the greatest rewards. This method probably does work for some people - for me, it was just a piece of the puzzle. I used older outlines and edited as needed, but I also read every case and briefed every case for every class - it worked very very well for me. Yes, it took a lot of time, but I knew what the professor was talking about in class when discussing the cases. My briefs also helped me tremendously in editing outlines, as for many professors, referencing precedent cases is one key to success on exams.

[z0mbiecatz1234]

I really wouldn't risk relying on other's outlines. I did pretty well 1L year by using another's outline from a previous year as merely a guide to see if their outline covered anything important that mine missed. Of course, if you take great notes, do the readings, etc. you probably won't skip over any huge concept. I also would recommend briefing cases AT LEAST the first semester. It is generally helpful to have briefs when throwing together outlines because you can pull important holdings, facts, etc. straight from the brief. I could not agree with you more on the importance of practice, practice, and more practice, but you cannot even consider not reading the cases the first semester. I think this is a sure-fire way to fail from the start. You might hear people bragging 2L/3L year about not reading but as a 1L, you have not mastered this. I'm not a 1L anymore and I still couldn't imagine just skipping the readings on a regular basis. Do the readings, write briefs, start outlines earlier in the semester if you can, and spend plenty of time studying your ass off come finals. Sadly, there is no shortcut to success.

[sublime]

Also, yeah. Along what tsl said, briefing is really diumb after a point but invaluable until you learn to do it well.

[bluthmodelhome]

Your 1L grades will likely depend entirely on your ability to issue spot. Issue spotting means recognizing which key facts trigger application of certain rules. I can't imagine how it would benefit you to skip reading cases, since the case that you are assigned to read will illustrate the seminal application of each black letter rule you need to know for the exam. Doing practice exams is not about regurgitating the black letter law. It's about applying the law to a new fact pattern. Which will probably be fairly analogous to one of the cases you read, because it's easy for profs to do that.

Read every assignment, brief every case in the beginning, but only include key facts in your brief - those that, if different, would change the outcome of the case. I briefed all the way through 1L and made my own outlines, then looked at old outlines to help with organization and make sure I wasn't missing anything. I finished top 5%. 1L year is not the time to slack off. You have the time to do all of the reading, and when you don't have to limit your OCI bids based on your GPA you will be glad that you did.