1L Resources

Assigned as required or recommended reading at law schools throughout the country, 1L of a Ride provides a candid, comprehensive roadmap to both academic and emotional success in law school's crucial first year. Told in an accessible first-person voice, covered topics in the revised and updated third edition include pre-planning, top student fears, first-year curriculum, the Socratic and case methods of teaching, effective class participation, top habits of successful students, essential study techniques, legal research and writing, exam strategies, maintaining well-being, and much more. Combines anecdotes, comments from law students, empirical research, and authentic samples of signature documents from the 1L experience, including exam questions, Socratic dialogue, and student case-briefs, class notes, and course outlines. McClurg is an award-winning professor who has taught at six different law schools.

The ability to read law well is an indispensable skill that can make or break the academic career of any aspiring lawyer. Fortunately, the ability to read law well (quickly and accurately) is a skill that can be acquired through knowledge and practice. First published in 2005, Reading Like a Lawyer has become a staple on many law school reading lists for prospective and admitted students. The second edition includes the same critical reasoning and reading strategies, accompanied by hands-on practice exercises, that made the first edition such a success. It adds a chapter on a growing challenge for this generation of legal readers: how to read legal materials online with maximum efficiency and effectiveness.

Professors Fischl and Paul explain law school exams in ways no one has before, all with an eye toward improving the reader's performance. The book begins by describing the difference between educational cultures that praise students for 'right answers,' and the law school culture that rewards nuanced analysis of ambiguous situations in which more than one approach may be correct. Enormous care is devoted to explaining precisely how and why legal analysis frequently produces such perplexing situations.

Law School Confidential is written for students about to embark on this three-year odyssey by students who have successfully survived. It demystifies the life-altering thrill ride that defines an American legal education by providing a comprehensive, blow-by-blow, chronological account of what to expect. It arms students with a thorough overview of the contemporary law school experience. This isn't the advice of graying professors or battle-scarred practitioners decades removed from law school. Miller has assembled a panel of recent graduates to act as "mentors", all of whom are perfectly positioned to shed light on what law school is like today. From taking the LSAT, to securing financial aid, to navigating the notorious first semester, to taking exams, to applying for summer internships, to getting on the law review, to tackling the bar and beyond...this book explains it all.

This is an introduction to legal reasoning for prospective and beginning law students. It argues, among other things, that the best decision in a case is not always the best legal decision.

Drawn from interviews with students and attorneys from leading law schools and firms, Finding Your Voice in Law School delivers winning strategies for succeeding in law school and beyond. Many college graduates aren't prepared for the new challenges they will face in law school. Intense classroom discussion, mock trials and moot courts, learning the language of law, and impressing potential employers in a range of interview situations -- it sounds intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. Finding Your Voice in Law School offers a step-by-step guide to the most difficult tests you will confront as a law student, from making a speech in front of a room full of lawyers to arguing before a judge and jury. Author Molly Shadel, a former Justice Department attorney and Columbia law graduate who now teaches advocacy at the University of Virginia School of Law, also explains how to lay a strong foundation for your professional reputation.

This extraordinary paperback provides a highly accessible and appealing orientation to the American legal system and presents basic concepts of civil litigation to first-year law students. Whose Monet? An Introduction to the American Legal System focuses on a lengthy dispute over the ownership of a painting as a vehicle for introducing students to the basic law school tasks of reading analytically, understanding legal materials, and working with the common law. The author and his colleagues have used these materials successfully in their classrooms for many years, ensuring their teachability and effectiveness: Whose Monet? can be used as primary course material in orientation courses or seminars, as well as collateral reading for in-semester Legal Process or Civil Procedure courses The organization is logical and straightforward and the accessible writing style--lucid, descriptive, and conversational--is ideal for incoming students The major events in a lawsuit are considered, and the text sheds light on how the law is applied in a civil dispute, introducing common law and statutory law and the various courts and their interrelationship (trial/appellate, state/federal) The author draws on judicial opinions, litigation papers, transcripts, and selections from commentators and various jurisprudential sources, thereby exposing the first-year student to as broad a spectrum of materials as possible Telling the story of a real lawsuit (DeWeerth v. Baldinger)--from client intake through trial and various appeals--draws students into the legal process by means of an engaging narrative and makes for a truly enjoying teaching experience for professors The lawyer's role is examined in both its functional and moral dimensions: What do lawyers do? What does society legitimately expect lawyers to do? This book is suitable for both classroom and stand-alone assigned reading