Great news for Kindle readers!

We received some good news recently:

Wolters Kluwer Law & Business (Aspen Publishers) has partnered with Amazon.com to sell eBooks via the Kindle platform.   Law School Survival Manual: From LSAT to Bar Exam will be among the first titles to be part of this exciting new opportunity. Through this partnership with Amazon, customers will be able to purchase the Law School Survival Manual via the Kindle Store on the Amazon.com website, directly through the Kindle eReader, and through multiple Kindle applications, including Kindle for iPad, Kindle for iPhone, Kindle for Android, Kindle for PC, Kindle for MAC, and more.

The Kindle version should be up soon.  Enjoy!

Between now and Thanksgiving--some advice for 1Ls.

OK, 1Ls:  you're probably exhausted right now.  You're working on your Legal Writing papers--which to many of you will feel as if you're writing in another language, on another planet--and you're starting to outline your first-semester courses.  You feel as if you've been drinking from a fire hose with all of the information you've been learning.  And you are starting to get heartburn / nightmares about finals.  What should you be doing right now?

1.  Legal writing matters.  Don't blow off your Legal Writing papers, even if your school makes the course a pass/fail course.  Legal writing = legal thinking, so for every minute that you spend drafting your papers, you're actually building your skills for exam-writing.  Think of your papers as two-fers:  fulfilling a course's requirements and learning step-by-step legal analysis, which is the skill that exams will be testing.  Moreover, most legal employers now are bemoaning the execreble (look it up!) writing skills of baby lawyers.  You'll be able to stand out later if you work hard on your legal writing skills now.

2.  Outlines are a tool for answering exams; they're not an end in themselves.  Our book gives you several different options for outlining your  courses.  There's not a single outline format that works best, and your professors aren't going to grade your outlines, so you need to figure out what type of outline will help you prepare for step #3.

3.  Start taking practice exams.  Yes, we know:  you don't know "the law" yet.  You haven't (a) started outlining or (b) finished outlining.  But here's the point:  MOST OF YOUR GRADES WILL BE BASED ON YOUR EXAM PERFORMANCE.  You've never taken law school exams before, so you need to learn the skill set that exams require:  issue identification, application of the facts in the hypo to the rules of law; ignoring red herrings; and prioritizing your discussion points to maximize your grade.  (Yes, we have two chapters devoted to exam-taking.) 

4.  Prepare to be unprepared.  Roughly two days after your courses end, you should STOP OUTLINING and start drilling for exams, even if you haven't finished your outlines.  It's more important to find out what you don't know (by taking practice exams) and to build your exam skills (yep, by taking practice exams) than it is to finish your outlines. 

5.  Prepare to work in groups.  Even if you prefer going solo during the semester, take practice exams with some of your law school colleagues.  You'll see where your blind spots are--and get a feel for the many ways to write exam answers--if you compare notes on your practice exams.

6.  EXERCISE.  Then exercise some more.  Exercise = reduced stress.  Reduced stress = better exam performance.

Aspen will give you a taste of our book by posting one free chapter.

And we think that the chapter's a doozy--it's on how to prepare for exams.  See here for the link to Aspen1L.

Law School Survival Manual gets reviewed over at The Faculty Lounge

We started the day by reading Prof. Laura Appleman's review of our book over at The Faculty Lounge (here).   That is a GOOD way to start the day.

1Ls: just how freaked out are you right now?

If you're feeling as though you're drinking from a fire hose, you're not imagining things.  Your professors are throwing so many concepts at you that you should feel overwhelmed.  (If you don't feel overwhelmed, you either come from a family of lawyers or you are excellent at repression.)

Now's a good time to pull out our book and read (re-read?) Chapters 3 and 4.

And don't forget to breathe.

We're available on Amazon!

See here.

Welcome to our blog!

Welcome to our blog!  Aspen Publishers / Wolters Kluwer is publishing our book, Law School Survival Manual: From LSAT to Bar Exam, this summer (see here for info).  Our book has the following chapters:

Chapter One--Before Law School Begins
Chapter Two--Orientation:  Welcome to Law School
Chapter Three--Some Universal Truths
Chapter Four--The First Two Weeks
Chapter Five--The First Month
Chapter Six--Some Advice About Writing
Chapter Seven--Preparing for Exams
Chapter Eight--The Marathon Aspect of Exams
Chapter Nine--First-Semester Grades
Chapter Ten--The Upperclass Curriculum
Chapter Eleven--Summer Jobs
Chapter Twelve--Evening (Part-Time) Programs / The Nontraditional Law Student
Chapter Thirteen--The Judicial Clerkship Process
Chapter Fourteen--The Bar Exam
Chapter Fifteen--A Few Last Survival Tips

We hope that you'll enjoy our book.  We also hope that you'll use this blog to check out some survival tips and to ask us questions about survival.  You can send us emails by clicking on "Contact us" (on the right) or by emailing Nancy at nancy.rapoport@unlv.edu.

Welcome to law school (if you're starting soon), and congratulations on making it through law school so far (if you're already there)!