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About how many pages of reading per week should I expect to get assigned during the first semester of 1L? Courses include:

legal rhetoric
torts
civ pro
contracts

If I told you the answer was 10,000, what difference would it make to you?

Probably around 150-250 pages a week.

It will depend on your professor. My 1L assignments ranged from 15 to 40 pages per class (as in each meeting). I'd say 30 on average. So if you have each subject 3 times a week, that is 12 classes times 30 pages. 360 pages. And that is only if you aren't doing any outside reading. Also remember it takes longer to read law school assignments at first, you may even have to read some of the stuff twice. Do what works for you. If it takes an hour to read 10 pages at first, then plan accordingly. Don't rush because it seems like it taking too long. Don't be embarrassed.

# of pages probably won't mean to much to you. Reading cases is very different from other reading. I'd usually get 20-30 pages assigned per class per day. I'm usually a very fast reader and I found MoS' assessment of an hour for 10 pages to be just about right.

I think usually it was anywhere from 20-40 pages per class. But really going by page numbers for law school texts to try and gauge how much work you will have is fairly meaningless IMO-- for one thing, many people use supplements so that will add a lot of reading, and for another thing, thoroughly reading and grasping 20 pages of certain cases in the texts is not necessarily as easy as one might think.

Emma. wrote:# of pages probably won't mean to much to you. Reading cases is very different from other reading. I'd usually get 20-30 pages assigned per class per day. I'm usually a very fast reader and I found MoS' assessment of an hour for 10 pages to be just about right.

Lol.. Already beat me to it... but I figured what the heck..

MoS wrote:It will depend on your professor. My 1L assignments ranged from 15 to 40 pages per class (as in each meeting). I'd say 30 on average. So if you have each subject 3 times a week, that is 12 classes times 30 pages. 360 pages. And that is only if you aren't doing any outside reading. Also remember it takes longer to read law school assignments at first, you may even have to read some of the stuff twice. Do what works for you. If it takes an hour to read 10 pages at first, then plan accordingly. Don't rush because it seems like it taking too long. Don't be embarrassed.

Luckily my classes only meet 8x a week which doesn't make it too bad because I read online somewhere that the weekly workload is about 450 pages/week.

Emma. wrote:# of pages probably won't mean to much to you. Reading cases is very different from other reading. I'd usually get 20-30 pages assigned per class per day. I'm usually a very fast reader and I found MoS' assessment of an hour for 10 pages to be just about right.

+1 Also, short cases can sometimes take longer to read than longer cases. It all depends on how dense the case is.

DC1L wrote: Luckily my classes only meet 8x a week which doesn't make it too bad because I read online somewhere that the weekly workload is about 450 pages/week.

I know you won't know until you start, but I wouldn't try to compare law school reading to anything else. I can read a 450 page book in a work day, I've actually done that this summer a couple of times for research projects. It would take me much longer to do that if it was from a case book. I would say between 3-5 work days.

eleventy billion

DC1L wrote:About how many pages of reading per week should I expect to get assigned during the first semester of 1L? Courses include:

legal rhetoric
torts
civ pro
contracts

The question is not the assigned reading- that everyone does.
The issue is the non-assigned reading. You should expect about 50-80 pages of non-assigned per night. And I'd read them all twice.

lawgod wrote:

DC1L wrote:About how many pages of reading per week should I expect to get assigned during the first semester of 1L? Courses include:

legal rhetoric
torts
civ pro
contracts

The question is not the assigned reading- that everyone does.
The issue is the non-assigned reading. You should expect about 50-80 pages of non-assigned per night. And I'd read them all twice.

TITCR. Assigned reading is for newbs. Hit up the supersecret unassigned reading 4 elite skorz.

Heartford wrote:

lawgod wrote:

DC1L wrote:About how many pages of reading per week should I expect to get assigned during the first semester of 1L? Courses include:

legal rhetoric
torts
civ pro
contracts

The question is not the assigned reading- that everyone does.
The issue is the non-assigned reading. You should expect about 50-80 pages of non-assigned per night. And I'd read them all twice.

TITCR. Assigned reading is for newbs. Hit up the supersecret unassigned reading 4 elite skorz.

And how do you go about hitting that up?

Its secret bro

lawgod wrote:

DC1L wrote:About how many pages of reading per week should I expect to get assigned during the first semester of 1L? Courses include:

legal rhetoric
torts
civ pro
contracts

The question is not the assigned reading- that everyone does.
The issue is the non-assigned reading. You should expect about 50-80 pages of non-assigned per night. And I'd read them all twice.

Eh, I didn't read nearly this much. I used the supplements for stuff I didn't understand up front and then as a review closer to finals.

I had no idea this board had this many flamers. I guess some of you have nothing to do when school is out

DC1L wrote:I had no idea this board had this many flamers. I guess some of you have nothing to do when school is out

Maybe 100 pages total per week. It usually runs about 5-15 pages per class, depending on the professor. Legal reading, if you are doing it right, is far slower than anything you've ever read.

Cupidity wrote:

DC1L wrote:I had no idea this board had this many flamers. I guess some of you have nothing to do when school is out

Maybe 100 pages total per week. It usually runs about 5-15 pages per class, depending on the professor. Legal reading, if you are doing it right, is far slower than anything you've ever read.

Textbooks with a heavy math focus can be just as bad or worse. But yeah, shit goes slow. I think the 10 pages/hour estimate isn't too far off the mark for me.

ahduth wrote:

Heartford wrote:

lawgod wrote:

DC1L wrote:About how many pages of reading per week should I expect to get assigned during the first semester of 1L? Courses include:

legal rhetoric
torts
civ pro
contracts

The question is not the assigned reading- that everyone does.
The issue is the non-assigned reading. You should expect about 50-80 pages of non-assigned per night. And I'd read them all twice.

TITCR. Assigned reading is for newbs. Hit up the supersecret unassigned reading 4 elite skorz.

And how do you go about hitting that up?

1) Attend office hours
2) While attending office hours, remove pants
3) After removing pants, stand up and dance like a seal. Like, the marine mammal.
4) Point @ professor, right in the face, and scream, "I KNOW YOU GOTS MAH SECRET READINGZ!!!"
5)???
6) Leet skorz.

(Note: during steps 2 through 5, the professor might pretend to seem annoyed, shocked, or terrified. S/he might even pretend to call security. Don't let this deter you- it's all an act.)

LOL credited

Cupidity wrote:

DC1L wrote:I had no idea this board had this many flamers. I guess some of you have nothing to do when school is out

Maybe 100 pages total per week. It usually runs about 5-15 pages per class, depending on the professor. Legal reading, if you are doing it right, is far slower than anything you've ever read.

Jane Eyre?

dailygrind wrote:

Cupidity wrote:

DC1L wrote:I had no idea this board had this many flamers. I guess some of you have nothing to do when school is out

Maybe 100 pages total per week. It usually runs about 5-15 pages per class, depending on the professor. Legal reading, if you are doing it right, is far slower than anything you've ever read.

Textbooks with a heavy math focus can be just as bad or worse. But yeah, shit goes slow. I think the 10 pages/hour estimate isn't too far off the mark for me.

You do get faster though. A key to doing well in law school is learning how to read opinions quickly. I blow through opinions now, probably "reading" hundreds of them a week at work. One key is that you can usually virtually ignore the facts, although it depends on the issues. The facts are mostly stated in depth for procedural reasons and posterity. They're then restated more concisely and relevantly in the discussion.

Usually there's a number of points of law, all of which support the holding or holdings. I would basically scan for these, highlight them, and understand how they supported the holding/disposition (the ultimate application of the law to the facts that decides the case). I would write a one or two sentence summary of the facts in the margin next to the facts section in case I was cold called on that.

Some people also do very well using supplements. I pretty much exclusively did not use supplements. However, reading a supplement, or looking up the case on WestLaw and reading the headnotes under the Key Numbers that correspond to the relevant issues can be a good way to cut down on reading time. I would recommend against using supplements in a way that increases reading time, however. Supplements become most relevant when you're outlining, if at all.

1) Attend office hours
2) While attending office hours, remove pants
3) After removing pants, stand up and dance like a seal. Like, the marine mammal.
4) Point @ professor, right in the face, and scream, "I KNOW YOU GOTS MAH SECRET READINGZ!!!"
5)???
6) Leet skorz.

(Note: during steps 2 through 5, the professor might pretend to seem annoyed, shocked, or terrified. S/he might even pretend to call security. Don't let this deter you- it's all an act.)

rofl
I don't know why but that was really funny.

Bronte wrote:Probably around 150-250 pages a week.

sounds about right