A Student's Guide to Law School: What Counts, What Helps, and What Matters

215 Pages·2013·1.01 MB·English

by  Andrew B. Ayers

g

g

y

g
yp
A STUDENT’S GUIDE TO LAW SCHOOL
Chicago Guides to Academic Life
The Chicago Guide to Your Career in Science
Victor A. Bloomfield and Esam El-Fakahany
The Chicago Handbook for Teachers
Alan Brinkley, Betty Dessants, Esam El-Fakahany, Michael Flamm,
Charles Forcey, Mathew L. Oullett, and Eric Rothschild
The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology
C. Ray Chandler, Lorne M. Wolfe, and Daniel E. L. Promislow
Behind the Academic Curtain
Frank F. Furstenberg
The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career
John A. Goldsmith, John Komlos, and Penny Schine Gold
How to Succeed in College (While Really Trying)
Jon. B. Gould
How to Study
Arthur W. Kornhauser
Doing Honest Work in College
Charles Lipson
Succeeding as an International Student in the United States and Canada
Charles Lipson
The Thinking Student’s Guide to College
Andrew Roberts
A Student’s Guide
to Law School
what counts, what helps,
and what matters
Andrew B. Ayers
The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London
Andrew B. Ayers is an appellate lawyer in Albany,
New York.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2013 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2013.
Printed in the United States of America
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-13: 978-0-226-06722-3 (cloth)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-06705-6 (paper)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-06719-3 (e-book)
doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226067193.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ayers, Andrew B.
A student’s guide to law school: what counts,
what helps, and what matters / Andrew B. Ayers.
pages. cm. — (Chicago guides to academic
life)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-226-06722-3 (cloth : alk. paper) —
isbn 978-0-226-06705-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
isbn 978-0-226-06719-3 (e-book) 1. Law—Study
and teaching—United States. I. Title II. Series:
Chicago guides to academic life.
kf283.a947 2013
340.071'173—dc23
2013005899
a This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso
z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
To my sister Liz, who once told me she
was thinking about law school.
Just in case.
The torch of chaos and doubt—
this is what the sage steers by.
chuang tzu
contents
Introduction 1
part i: The Way You’re Judged 7
1 What Exams Want 9
2 Seven Choices You’ll Make on Exam Day 19
3 What You’ll Need by Exam Day 25
part ii: The Skills You’ll Need 31
4 Distilling the Law 33
5 Issue Spotting 51
6 Argument 61
part iii: The Work You’ll Do 83
7 Reading 85
8 Speaking in Class 91
9 Listening in Class 103
10 Notes and Outlines 109
11 Ten Ways to Use a Study Group 121
12 Beyond Traditional Classes 127
part iv: The Lawyer You’ll Become 133
13 Judgment Calls 135
14 What Lawyers Do 147
15 The Hats Lawyers Wear 157
16 The Person under the Hat 167
Conclusion: The Questions You’ll Ask 177
Acknowledgments 183
Suggestions for Further Reading 185
About the Author 187
Sources for Epigraphs 189
Notes 191
Index 203
Introduction
In May 2006, a seven-year-old boy named Braxton Bilbrey became the
youngest person ever to swim from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco. When
he got to the shore, there were some reporters waiting. One asked him what
the hardest part was.
He said, “The swimming.”1
In the beginning, law school feels like that. Everything feels like the
hardest part, because you don’t see things clearly yet. You don’t know what’s
important and what isn’t. You can’t tell which parts of the reading to focus
on and which to skim. You don’t know what to write down in your notes. I
would have spent a lot more time panicking in my first year, except that I
didn’t yet know which parts of law school I was supposed to panic about.
I wasn’t alone. According to one study, “the emotional distress of law
students appears to significantly exceed that of medical students and at
times to approach that of psychiatric populations.”2 Everybody feels lost in
the first year of law school. If you don’t, you’re probably not paying close
enough attention.
One of the best cures for stress is a sense of control. But you can’t take
control until you understand what’s happening to you. So this book will
help you understand the daily choices you make in law school, and how they
affect your grades and your future.
Law school requires you to make a lot of decisions. You’ll decide what to
focus on when you do your nightly reading, what to put into your notes,
whether to raise your hand in class (and if you do, what to say), whether to
join a study group, how long to spend on each exam question, and so on.