Has anyone regretted prepping heavy for law school? Forum

[Incubateus]

I over-prepared my first semester and it ended up hurting me. I did a crazy amount of work 1L first semester, followed one of the stickied pieces of advice on here, took LEEWS, read planet law school, GTM, law school ninja, all of the E&Es, and so on. I knew the law cold, but still ended up at the 85th percentile, mostly because the law is easy to overthink. After that semester I said fuck it, I'm just gonna do a few practice essays before the exam and that's it. I ended up getting straight As from then on.

Everyone is different, but for me it's just better to get a rough grip on the subject and think my way through things rather than trying to learn every nook and cranny. That's what they want to see on the exam anyway, you working through the logic of why one rule should apply over another.

[jphiggo]

I would suggest LEEWS and skimming GTM. Read GTM in late October before your first exams begin. Anything more than that and there's likely to be no real benefit to you.

Getting your cover letters squared away, along with your resume, would be a wiser use of time, as another poster suggested.

[nreese970]

The only thing that you should do prepare for 1L is learn how to type fast. Seriously, that skill will not only help during 1L but will carry over into practice. Get that speed up to breakneck pace.

I type at about 110 WPM, so I've got this one covered, but good advice for others for sure.

That said, I don't seem to have the "OMG WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH A CIVPRO E&E DON'T YOU KNOW YOUR PROFESSOR MIGHT NOT EVEN COVER SUBJECT MATTER JURISDICTION AND YOU'LL BURN OUT IN OCTOBER!?!?"-feeling that most of TLS seems to have about substantive prep. I ended up doing really well and would make myself do more substantive prep if I could go back. NOTE: by substantive prep I mean practice WRITING OUT how a law/rule applies to a mini-fact pattern, not merely learning rules so you can recite them. The thing you need to practice is applying law to fact. The reason that reading GTM doesn't make a lot of sense yet, and the reason I think learning substantive laws as an 0L is okay, is that you can't practice it unless you know a little law and you can't know a little law until you learn it. I think going casually through the torts E&E and actually working out the problems (NOT just reading it and knowing the rules, which would be pretty worthless for the usually cited reasons), but actually applying the getting to maybe nitpicking that everyone talks about, in a word document under time constraints trying to make as many arguments on the section's questions as possible, could be beneficial. Also I'd tell myself to spend more time reading the civpro e&e so I could get a general overview of it ahead of time, but my prof was meh so I had to teach myself all the material eventually anyways. you don't need to learn all 6 subjects, remember you're not trying to learn the rules, you only need to know a handful of rules as means to the end of practicing the skill you'll do for all the marbles in about 5 months.

I definitely agree with this. I'm not just reading to memorize black letter law, I'm doing it so I can start practicing hypos now and throughout the semester.

[First Offense]

I'm steadfastly against 0L prep, but the one thing I wish I had learned that isn't really taught in law school is to be a better writer. So I'm backpedaling a bit and I'm going to say you should read and internalize The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. Short, chrap, but it's helped me a ton.

[rnoodles]

At the risk of sounding strange, how fast of a typing speed is considered good enough for LS? 110 just sounds like a crazy outlier.

[blueberrycrumble]

Thankful for all the posters validating my summer laziness of no prep except GTM, but still feel bad everytime a gunner 0L lists all the books/prep they've read/done so far already... makes me feel so unprepared

[UnicornHunter]

At the risk of sounding strange, how fast of a typing speed is considered good enough for LS? 110 just sounds like a crazy outlier.

I type at 40-50 wpm and it worked fine.

[rnoodles]

At the risk of sounding strange, how fast of a typing speed is considered good enough for LS? 110 just sounds like a crazy outlier.

I type at 40-50 wpm and it worked fine.

Alright, cool. Was worried I was on the low end.

[thesealocust]

At the risk of sounding strange, how fast of a typing speed is considered good enough for LS? 110 just sounds like a crazy outlier.

Don't worry about it too much. I have friends that got top 5% grades writing exams literally half the length of mine. Some people write long exams and then shout to the roof tops about its importance, but as long as your writing is good and you know your shit, typing speed and exam length aren't themselves critical.

[tomwatts]

I write relatively fast, and I expected to write about 1000 words every half hour of an exam. It looks like the math on that (1000 words / 30 minutes) suggests that typing 30-40 wpm would have been sufficient. It was important, though, that the typing itself was automatic. You shouldn't have to think about typing as you're doing it, so that you can always be thinking about the exam.

[rnoodles]

At the risk of sounding strange, how fast of a typing speed is considered good enough for LS? 110 just sounds like a crazy outlier.

Don't worry about it too much. I have friends that got top 5% grades writing exams literally half the length of mine. Some people write long exams and then shout to the roof tops about its importance, but as long as your writing is good and you know your shit, typing speed and exam length aren't themselves critical.

Sound advice. I've never thought about how fast I typed until I read this thread, but it's great to know it's nothing too serious. Could you also ballpark a word limit for a well written exam, or is that pretty subjective too?

[rnoodles]

I write relatively fast, and I expected to write about 1000 words every half hour of an exam. It looks like the math on that (1000 words / 30 minutes) suggests that typing 30-40 wpm would have been sufficient. It was important, though, that the typing itself was automatic. You shouldn't have to think about typing as you're doing it, so that you can always be thinking about the exam.

That was actually something I was wondering. I'd assume in an actual exam the typing would be slower because you'd stop and think about the exam itself and what to say, make sure everything is coherent, etc. But, and please correct me if I'm wrong, it seems that you're saying as long as your focus remains on the exam itself, then the typing/overall exam speed should follow just fine, right? Seems like everyone is emphasizing more quality than quantity.

[thesealocust]

Sound advice. I've never thought about how fast I typed until I read this thread, but it's great to know it's nothing too serious. Could you also ballpark a word limit for a well written exam, or is that pretty subjective too?

It's pretty subjective. On the upper end is a bit over ~2,500 words written per hour of exam time (so including writing, planning, writing, and revising). I haven't heard of any longer than that really. But like I said, I know people who wrote exams around half that length at got As.

And some questions have word limits, some exams have multiple choice questions, professors occasionally write exams that only require short answers (more objective stuff, like tax or civ pro, is sometimes like this), etc.

That was actually something I was wondering. I'd assume in an actual exam the typing would be slower because you'd stop and think about the exam itself and what to say, make sure everything is coherent, etc. But, and please correct me if I'm wrong, it seems that you're saying as long as your focus remains on the exam itself, then the typing/overall exam speed should follow just fine, right? Seems like everyone is emphasizing more quality than quantity.

I take it you haven't started law school yet? It's really not worth obsessing over. Don't get me wrong, obsessing over getting points on exams is very important - but length is something that should flow naturally form mastering the law and practicing the skill of making arguments, not from thinking about length itself, if that makes any sense.

[unlicensedpotato]

For a bunch of topics, E&E isn't really the best supplement. Sure, for torts or civ pro its probably the best you are going to find, but for things like crim law or contracts, there are better supps. This is why you shouldn't be buying this stuff in the summer before school starts. As a general matter, your school library will have almost every supplement you need. And supplements are the kind of books you only need from time to time anyway, so its no issue to just hit the library for it. Plus, by waiting until school starts, you can see if your prof has a recommendation for a supp that correlates particularly well with his take on the material.

And for the record, your approach is all wrong. Reading E&E's and doing LEEWS in the summer before law school is time wasted that you could be putting to much better use. Again, I was you about 5 years ago, and it was a mistake.

Not exactly on point to OP but wanted to strongly disagree with supplement comments here. It's true that you won't get much out of reading them before classes start and I certainly wouldn't recommend doing it.

But, this advice to just borrow the supplement from time to time is very wrong in my opinion. 1L classes are very rote and it is not difficult to explain all the issues fairly easily and clearly. I'm studying for the bar right now and contracts, for example, is condensed to ~75 pages that you can get through quickly. This material and knowledge of UCC citations would have been more than enough to get you an A on my contracts test. Why would you possibly study anything else?

Instead of checking the supplement from time to time, you should be checking your case book rarely and otherwise using your supplement and outline while completing practice exams. For most classes (with con law as one exception), the content of the cases are largely irrelevant and a supplement will tell you what you need to know in a paragraph (or less) instead of a 20 page case. Plus, in open note tests, having the supplement with you, already highlighted and organized, is incredibly valuable if you need to look something up quickly.

In my opinion, a lot of law students look down on supplements and are obsessed with the professor's take and learning all the ins and outs. I think it is easier to excel on your grades if you bypass that and focus on just what you need to know for the exam.

[UnicornHunter]

Torts e & e would have been waaaaay worse than useless for my torts. For Contracts, the best studying I did was reading the notes to the UCC and the Restatement. It's completely prof dependent.

[A. Nony Mouse]

The only classes where I ignored the reading and relied on supplements were my lowest grades by far. I get that it works for some people, but it doesn't work for everyone.

[rnoodles]

Sound advice. I've never thought about how fast I typed until I read this thread, but it's great to know it's nothing too serious. Could you also ballpark a word limit for a well written exam, or is that pretty subjective too?

It's pretty subjective. On the upper end is a bit over ~2,500 words written per hour of exam time (so including writing, planning, writing, and revising). I haven't heard of any longer than that really. But like I said, I know people who wrote exams around half that length at got As.

And some questions have word limits, some exams have multiple choice questions, professors occasionally write exams that only require short answers (more objective stuff, like tax or civ pro, is sometimes like this), etc.

That was actually something I was wondering. I'd assume in an actual exam the typing would be slower because you'd stop and think about the exam itself and what to say, make sure everything is coherent, etc. But, and please correct me if I'm wrong, it seems that you're saying as long as your focus remains on the exam itself, then the typing/overall exam speed should follow just fine, right? Seems like everyone is emphasizing more quality than quantity.

I take it you haven't started law school yet? It's really not worth obsessing over. Don't get me wrong, obsessing over getting points on exams is very important - but length is something that should flow naturally form mastering the law and practicing the skill of making arguments, not from thinking about length itself, if that makes any sense.

Rising 1L, so this is all very new to me. And as far as your point is concerned, it definitely makes sense. Without overprepping over the summer, would it be possible to get into the groove of exam taking? I'm still trying to wrap my head around the greater emphasis on application as opposed to pure retention and regurgitation. And I don't mean to take old exams already and try to take them because that's excessive. But anything within reason would be nice to know!

[thesealocust]

My stock advice is to buy and read Getting to Maybe, with the understanding that you're not trying to "figure it out" so much as you're trying to prime your brain for extracting useful information out of case readings and class time. You can also pour through everything here: http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... 3&t=123092

Knowing more about what you'll have to do in December will help you prioritize during the prior months, even if it will be difficult to master what you have to do in December before starting classes. One of the challenges of 1L is that it's very hard to think through exams in the abstract without first wading through a semester of cases. Many students find that right around Thanksgiving, when classes are wrapping up, you've put lots of work into outlines, etc. it's a lot easier to wrap your mind around the nuances of exam strategy.

[Lacepiece23]

I read getting to maybe, the guides posted here, and most importantly worked on my typing speed. I actually believe that each helped me. I sort of knew what I was supposed to be doing, and saw the bigger picture earlier. While everyone else was struggling to read civ pro early on I read a hornbook and drank beer instead. Later on while everyone was reading civ pro I read a hornbook and started memorizing/doing practice tests.

Most importantly I worked on my typing speed. This helped immensely during finals. I went from typing 30 words per minute to like 70. I was a god awful typist. Now I'm just poor--for law school standards. I believe that I border line would have failed if I hadn't worked on my typing speed.