Law School Study With Me – My Killer Lecture Note Taking Method

When it comes to law school, what are we all so afraid of? Well, if you're headed into law school, you likely already have some fears that you've probably generated from things that people have said or things that you've heard from social media. And if you are curious about law school, then this might be a little bit of a reality check for you. But don't worry, we're going to talk through what those fears are and what to do about them so that they do not have to dominate your law school experience. And speaking of your law school experience, if you already know that law school is the next big thing for you, be sure to grab my free beat the curve guide. It is a step by step action plan for how to position yourself for the final grades that you want. I'll be sure to drop it in the description below. So if you guys are ready to talk law school fears, smash that like button and let's go. The first fear that a lot of law students identify is the fear of the reading. And this makes a lot of sense because when we're talking about the reading assigned in law school, we're specifically talking about reading cases. And most of us have never seen a case before, much less read one. And so it can be very overwhelming and intimidating the first time that we ever get assigned to read a case in class. And when we talk about cases, we're specifically talking about written judicial opinions designed to resolve a dispute between two parties in a lawsuit. And so when we sit down to read a case, we're not reading it start to finish like we might a textbook or an academic article or a novel. We are reading it to identify and extract very specific information. And that information is the facts, the issue, the rule, the reasoning, and the holding. And although that sounds really straightforward, and it could be, judges don't write their opinions with law students in mind. And so they don't signal for us, hey, this is the issue that I'm resolving, or this is the new legal rule I'm creating, or even this is the holding that I'm coming to in this case. And so it can make it very overwhelming and very complicated to try to almost scavenger hunt this information out of these cases that you're reading for the very first time. And so what I would recommend not doing is going out and just reading hundreds of cases before law school. You might hear that advice a lot where you just need to read a lot. Or that could be US Supreme Court cases. That could be the US Constitution. That could be long Russian novels. You just need to get used to reading. I couldn't disagree more. Because when it comes to law school, yes, you are going to be assigned a lot of reading, but it's not about volume. It's about strategic extraction of information. And so what I would recommend doing is, since you're on YouTube, search Quimby case brief videos and check out a few of those three to eight minute videos that Quimby creates that gives you a breakdown of what is happening in a case and why in the world this case is being assigned to for a particular rule of law. Having something like that, a pre-class resource, as I call it with my students, is so important and powerful because now you know what this case is all about and how it fits into the larger picture. And it essentially serves as a GPS for you when you're ready to sit down and actually read a case for the first time so that you know what in the world you're looking for. The next fear that a lot of us have heading into law school is the workload. And I can't quote this one, guys. This is legitimate because law school requires more out of us than most of us have ever experienced to this point, even if we consider ourselves incredibly dedicated students or workaholics in the professional sphere. And the reason for that is that law school actually creates more work for us than we can physically get done in a 24 hour period of time. And not only are we being bombarded with this massive amount of content to learn and internalize, we are also being introduced to a new vocabulary, new skills, new learning curves that we are also trying to master simultaneously. And so it makes for an incredibly difficult, challenging, and stressful first year of law school. And so when it comes to what not to do, I would say as much as you can possibly help it to not start law school without a plan in place. And the main reason for that, as I mentioned, is if we don't have a strategy or a plan for how we're going to tackle this workload, we can not only feel overwhelmed, but like we're drowning immediately starting that very first week that we start getting assigned work to do. And on the flip side, if we can, what I would love for each and every one of you to have is a time strategy in place so that you know what you're spending your hours on on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, and having it all tied together so that you are exactly where you want to be by the end of the semester. The plan and the strategy that I teach my students is called the ultimate law school calendar. And we get super tangible and detailed about what we're doing every hour of every day as we make our way through the semester so that it is all connected to the result that we're actually looking for. Another fear that all of us have heading into law school is the fear of cold calls. And the good news about this fear is that it's all bark and no bite, meaning it is a legitimate fear, but we don't need to be afraid of it. And the reason is when we refer to cold calls, that is the lecture style of a lot of law school professors, which means you walk in and sit down, and then the professor takes out a seating chart and calls on somebody at random and says something like, Miss Wilson, tell us about Harry versus Stiles. And then you're expected to recite the facts and the rule and the reasoning and the holding of that case. And then the professor follows it up with some hypothetical questions like, if these facts were different in this way, how would that affect the court's ruling? And as you can imagine, it generates a lot of fear because one, we don't know when it's going to happen. And so we're kind of sitting in this anxiety-filled room where we could be gorilla punched at any moment and without notice. We're also doing it with an audience, so we're being asked to recite these details and do it well in front of all of our classmates and in front of the professor. And most of us tend to be perfectionists who head into law school, and so we want to do a good job. And we want to show the professor that we read, and we want to show our classmates that we understand, and we want to come off as impressive and professional at the very least. And so as you can imagine, it generates a lot of anxiety and fear. The good news or the reason that we don't need to fear these things is because cold calls are actually 0% of your grade. They don't affect the final outcome of the course. And even for professors who say cold calling or participate in class is something like 5% of your grade or a bump up or a bump down, the only way that you are losing those points is if you repeatedly and intentionally do not read and make that known to the professor and do it pretty much in a disrespectful way. So you don't have to fear cold calls as a thing that you have to master or be good at or even do better than the person sitting next to you. It's designed to be a learning experience. It's just in practice way more of a bullying experience. And so what I don't want you guys to do is to fall into the trap that we all fall into, at least at the beginning, which is pouring hours and hours and hours and trying to master the content from the case, trying to create quote unquote perfect case briefs all out of a fear of being asked a question in class that we don't know the answer to. Instead, I actually want you guys to come at it with a mentality of a D plus understanding, meaning just good enough to get through a few back and forth with your professor, just good enough to be able to recite the very, very high level details and information of the case, and just good enough to be able to guess at an answer or say, I don't recall that particular fact. And the reason is again, because we don't want to put our energy and intention into something that is 0% of our grade. We don't want to be disrespectful. So we're going to go ahead and play the game that our professor is posing, but we do want to put our energy and attention into what actually moves the needle to get us the results that we want at the end of the semester. This next fear hits really close to home, and that is the fear of not being good enough. And this is something that all of us are going to feel at some point during 1L year, which is both beautiful in the sense that it's a universal experience, but that doesn't make it any easier to go through ourselves. And I think the reason that so many of us feel this way is because when we're headed into law school, law school tends to attract people who are smart, ambitious, and hardworking. And that means that we've likely experienced some level of success in our life before law school, whether that's in work or whether that's in academia or both. And so we're essentially self-selecting into a group of people who are also smart, ambitious, and hardworking. And for the first time in our lives, we're surrounded by peers that are similar to us in that context. And so it can breed this sense of, I'm not smart enough to be here. I don't have what it takes to be here. And law school perpetuates that even more because of the way that grading is structured, which is on a curve, meaning that there's only a limited number of grades at the top of the curve, the A's and the A minuses that can be assigned to everyone in a given class, which inherently breeds competition. And not only that, the way that law school is structured exacerbates this problem even more because 1L and 2L hiring, extracurriculars like law review and moot court, and also positions like teaching assistant positions and research assistant positions disproportionately put emphasis on that first year of law school grades. And so we have this sense of not only do I need to be as good if not better than the people around me, but I need to be able to learn this stuff and master this stuff immediately. And so as hard as this is and as big of an ask as this is, and arguably as cliche as this sounds, what I would invite you guys not to do is to define your self-worth and your good enough limit by the grades or the extracurriculars, sort of these traditional notches in your belt, so to speak. Instead, what I would love to invite you guys to try to do is to separate yourself and your self-worth and your personal identity from these more traditional measurements of quote-unquote success in law school, because at the end of the day, all they are are marketing tools to help you go after the job that you want when you graduate. But they are not the only thing that you're bringing to the table. They're not the only tools that you have. You are smart, hardworking, ambitious, resourceful, persistent, and you are going after it in your life in the biggest and baddest way possible. And so it's really important to remember that building the career and the life that you want can look and does look different for every single one of us. And what we use to get that end goal is going to be multi-layered. It is not just a number on a page. And so that doesn't mean don't go after the extracurriculars. It doesn't mean don't go after the positions. It doesn't mean don't go after the grades. Yes, they can help you open those doors, but they're also not the only thing that you have going for you. And at the end of the day, they are merely a means. They are not an end. This next fear is also one that most of us have heading into law school, and that is the fear of final exams. And this makes total sense and is completely realistic and legitimate because final exams make up words to 100% of our grade, and they're tested in a way that most of us are completely unused to. Add on to the fact that final exam writing strategy is not taught in law school, and your professor is not going to be transparent about what he or she wants in their final exam answer. So what do we do with all of this information? The first thing to do, and the first thing to realize, I should say not to do, is to fall into this misconception that knowing the law is enough. I know it sounds completely counterintuitive, and I know we're spending hours and hours throughout the semester internalizing this material, learning this material, and these legal rules, but knowing the law in and of itself is not going to get you the grades that you want. Instead, what we need is a final exam writing strategy that allows us to take those legal rules, apply them to the facts, to then craft arguments and counter arguments. So if you are interested in how to go about building out that final exam writing strategy, definitely hit subscribe and tap that notification bell so that you'll be notified of the next video I'm making, where I'm going to break down how I am teaching law school strategy this year, and how it differs from the traditional advice you are likely to hear from your professors, from other law students, and from student services. Because I absolutely get the most frustrated when I see well-intentioned, hard-working people applying strategies that are outdated, that are inefficient, and then don't get you the results that you're looking for. So we're going to do a deep dive into those strategy pieces, so make sure you stick around, stay tuned for that video. So in a bizarre way, that was really fun talking through these major fears that so many of us have heading into law school. Hopefully, they normalize the fears for you guys, but also show you that there are action steps that you can absolutely put in place to make sure that these fears aren't looping in the background of your mind and don't dominate the experience that you have before and during your 1L year. So if you are somebody who thrives in action, who thrives in making a plan and knowing what's coming, I definitely invite you to check out my Signature 1L Coaching Program Law School Master Plan. I'll link it in the description below, and it's all about us going through that first semester of law school together, the before, the during, and the after of what strategies to put in place, so that every hour and every step that you're taking is directly tailored to that end result that you're looking for. So I hope this was helpful, guys, and I'm so excited to see you in the next video.