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Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 9:16 am
by hangnail
Perhaps I don't see anything about this because it's a crazy idea but might it be useful to begin reviewing the Blue Book/
reading law review articles and trying to understand citations and writing style before law school? Might it help with preparing for writing competitions or (even better) for exams (not content-wise but style-wise)?
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 9:18 am
by Anciano
No.
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 9:19 am
by rad lulz
Do it. I'd memorize all the Table 6 abbreviations. It can only help
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 9:24 am
by hephaestus
Absolutely not.
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 10:22 am
by GertrudePerkins
I've never heard of any professor expecting anything like Bluebooked citations on an exam, so it won't help you with that.
reading law review articles is considerably less crazy than reading the Bluebook, but I still wouldn't do it as a form of preparation. Do it if you actually are interested in the content of the article, but bear in mind that 98% of law review articles are bad.
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 10:31 am
by kaiser
No. Just...no
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 10:38 am
by FKASunny
Wait, I can't just do MLA?
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 10:39 am
by ru2486
hang yourself instead
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 10:43 am
by GatorEagle1
It'd be an awesome idea to memorize all of the cites to the foreign jurisdictions. You never know when you will need to cite the upper court of the western district of Nepal.
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 10:50 am
by kaiser
GatorEagle1 wrote:It'd be an awesome idea to memorize all of the cites to the foreign jurisdictions. You never know when you will need to cite the upper court of the western district of Nepal.
You gotta know that if you wanna practice BigSherpaLaw
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 12:50 pm
by A. Nony Mouse
The other thing that's wrong with this idea (among many) is that law review writing "style" is not "legal writing." If you're on LR, yes, you need to write a note (law review article) so you'll want to get a sense of what one looks like during 2L. But everything else you will ever write in law should NOT look like a law review article, including your exams. So studying LR articles before law school is not going help you. (Caveat: unless you are gunning for academia and plan to write a LR article, like, every year you're in school. But generally speaking this will be worse than useless.)
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 1:04 pm
by Richie Tenenbaum
If you want to gun at lrw, go for it. It's a weird thing to do though. And reading the bluebook isn't going to help much (it certainly won't affect your writing ability). If you want to work on your writing, get volokh's academiclegal writing and something written by bryan garner.
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 1:21 pm
by kalvano
There's an index in the back. Why memorize crap that you can look up in seconds?
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 1:28 pm
by Dr. Dre
ru2486 wrote:hang yourself instead
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 1:50 pm
by quiver
rad lulz wrote:Do it. I'd memorize all the Table 6 abbreviations. It can only help
Agreed. I can't tell you how many times I've been writing an exam and needed to look up the abbreviation for "Steamship
." I'm pretty sure it cost me an A in my Law & Mark Twain class.
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 2:16 pm
by ChaseInk
Wow. Wow. Wow...
Get the online version. Word search.
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 3:13 pm
by Bronck
This has gotta be a troll
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 11:15 pm
by TheBiggerMediocre
I used to read law review articles then I realized they were all speculative...
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 11:28 pm
by Scotusnerd
hangnail wrote:Perhaps I don't see anything about this because it's a crazy idea but might it be useful to begin reviewing the Blue Book/reading law review articles and trying to understand citations and writing style before law school? Might it help with preparing for writing competitions or (even better) for exams (not content-wise but style-wise)?
You have got to be kidding me. No. Go out and get some beers. There is absolutely no point in getting to know that horrid thing before you have to. You will not be any better prepared, trust me.
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 11:41 pm
by hephaestus
kaiser wrote:GatorEagle1 wrote:It'd be an awesome idea to memorize all of the cites to the foreign jurisdictions. You never know when you will need to cite the upper court of the western district of Nepal.
You gotta know that if you wanna practice BigSherpaLaw
Highly underrated comment.
Re: Studying Blue Book Before Law School
Posted: Sun May 05, 2013 12:17 am
by bjsesq
Remove the wire binding that holds the blue book together. Straighten it out and file one end to a sharp point. Done? Good. Now jam it in your fucking eye.