Seriously. Look at these real quotes from law students who wrote to me:
“The last thing I would want is to work really hard for average grades.”
“I actually just started law school this week and am feeling slightly overwhelmed.”
“I am a struggling 1L . . . and need help just getting my stuff together and staying for exams.”
“I just finished my first semester and I got all B+’s so I’d like to try and figure out what I can change to get over the hump and into A territory this semester.”
“I feel that professors do not tell you what they are looking for until after they grade your work.”
“I am in desperate need of a tutor.”
“My short term goal is to pull up my grades so . . . I can really see myself reaching my career aspirations.”
* * *
Have any of these thoughts passed through your head?
You are very not alone.
Like quite the opposite of alone.
Almost all law students – even the most successful ones if they are honest with you – freak out about law school and think these same thoughts:
- How do I get good grades in law school?
- There is so much work and stress – how do I manage it all?
- How do I get the job of my dreams?
- How do I avoid being one of the many broke-ass law students with no job and $250,000 in debt?
Even the most successful law students had these concerns.
The question is – for those who succeeded – what did they do?
Like, what secrets are these devious jerks hiding from us?
And who do I have to sleep with/threaten with violence/bribe/blackmail to get these secrets?
Good news! You don’t have to sleep with, threaten, bribe or blackmail anyone!
(Because that would be a terrible start to your legal career, no?)
Keep reading!
BUY KICK THE CRAP OUT OF LAW SCHOOL
SUMMERTIME AND THE FIRST WEEKS OF LAW SCHOOL
So, now that I have your attention, back to you.
Picture it.
It’s your last summer before law school.
Maybe you just finished college (congrats!) or maybe you’ve been working a couple of years and are taking a breather before starting school again.
You try to have a fun, easy summer. Maybe you go out a lot at home – drinking, hanging out, chain-watching Game of Thrones. Maybe you hit the road and go backpacking in Europe.
Sometimes you can enjoy the relaxation. Sometimes you are even excited thinking about your future as a lawyer.
In your head, the law seems exciting. You imagine saving the world at the United Nations. Or arguing a huge case before the Supreme Court. Or closing a massive, Wall Street Journal-headlinedeal.
Why not, right? It’s just a lot of hard work.
You did very well in college — you graduated with honors, maybe even straight As.
(That’s why you’re at a good law school to begin with.)
You feel pretty confident.
Sometimes.
But sometimes, too, you have to admit, you’re a little scared.
Maybe you’re even terrified.
You’re about to make a HUGE investment in your future. You’ve read the horror stories. Three tough years and $250,000 in debt and a tough job market.
With no guarantees that you’ll get straight As.
So do you just sit there?
Obviously not.
You’re smart and resourceful.
You’re also not used to asking for help.
So you try to help yourself.
You hit the Interwebs and google something silly like “how do I totally kick ass in law school without breaking a sweat on this gorgeous face of mine.” Or you buy a book on Amazon.
Or you even swallow your pride and ask an older friend who went to law school.
And once you start school, you begin to hear all sorts of advice, whether you want it or not. Rumors from your classmates, rumors about what to do and what not to do.
And that is when the confusion starts.
Everyone, it seems, has an opinion on how to do well in law school.
You get a bunch of different views on law school success.
More than that: You get directly contradictory, mutually-exclusive views.
“Brief cases!”/“Don’t brief cases!”
“Do practice exams!”/“Don’t do practice exams!”
“Outline early!”/“Wait until the end to outline!”
“Don’t prepare over the summer; you’ll study wrong.”/“Totally prepare over the summer! Everyone else is ready!”
“Never miss class class!”/“Ignore that old white man running his mouth!”
Um, WTF?
And what’s worse, when you ask your older friends how they did in law school, how they really did in law school, they look down at the floor.
These former straight-A students are straight-B law students.
Seriously, WTF WTF?!?!
Wait a sec, you think. How did that happen?
Your friend was smart and hard working.
Your friend got Bs.
You are smart and hard working.
… but you definitely don’t want to get Bs.
And you think to yourself, well I’ll just work even harder than my friend.
But you think back and remember that you friend was no slouch. She was an absolute workaholic beast.
And she tells you – I worked really hard and got Bs.
And the terrifying realization:
Oh my God, I can be smart AND work hard AND get mediocre grades.
NOW WHAT?
BUY KICK THE CRAP OUT OF LAW SCHOOL
Well, in Douglas Adams’ immortal words:
DON’T PANIC!
CALM THE F*** DOWN!
Let’s work through this problem together. Something does not add up here. How can smart, hard-working people get crappy grades? Once we understand that, we are half way to a solution.
—-
THE PROBLEM
Let’s look at one of the quotes from a panicked law student: “I feel that professors do not tell you what they are looking for until after they grade your work.” Well, what is it that they want you to do during the semester? Many professors ask you to:
- Do the reading to prepare for class.
- Brief cases.
- Be prepared to be called on in class. OR FACE UTTER AND COMPLETE RIDICULE A LA THE PAPER CHASE.
- But even if you’re prepared your professor may MOCK YOU TO YOUR FACE.
You’re asked about the tiniest, stupidest details in cases.
So you frantically read cases and brief and study to avoid looking stupid in class.
You hate looking stupid in class.
But then as the fall turns into winter, the professors tells you: Hey, maybe you should outline and take some practice exams. You get passed a second-hand outline and have no idea why it is what it is. So you basically condense your notes and try to copy other old outlines.
And you take some practice exams. They make no sense to you. You stay up late nights before your finals. Too much Red Bull and coffee.
You frantically re-read your outline, your books and old exams. You still feel lost. You go to sleep, wake up and walk to class.
You sit down. You open your first real exam and see this craziness: [Insert picture of exam here.]
WTF? Um, WTMFF? How do I answer that?
People around you just start typing. Type type type. So begin to type and freak out more – what do they know that you don’t that they are typing already one minute after you start?
You read the exam and type again. You flip your outline.
You sweat more.
One hour passes.
Just two left.
Everyone is still typing. So you start typing half-hearted answers. You curse because each of your answers seems stupid. One hour left. You’ve barely answered the first question and there are two more. So you begin typing quickly. You see claims or defenses; you don’t know if what you’ve written is right, but you are running out of time. Suddenly the proctor calls five minutes left. You type even faster.
Your palms sweat.
Time.
You stand up.
You gather your computer and papers, pack up and stagger back to your room. What just happened? What the f— just happened? You go home for Christmas and weeks later you check your grades online only to get your first B ever.
—-
WHAT HAPPENED? Good question. Here is the heart of the problem: When you went to college, the recipe to get an A was to work very hard doing what your professor asked you to do.
But when you go to law school, the recipe to get a flat B is to work very hard doing what your professor asks you to do.
In other words, law school is a bait and switch.
And what’s worse, 100% of your grade is the final exam. And you never get a mark-up.
You only get one chance to make a first impression.
WHAT’S THE SOLUTION? Now, before you hear the solution, you might be asking, “Why should I listen to you?” Fair enough.
I am Larry Law Law (also Larry the Law Tutor or the Law School Hacker). This is me:
You want to listen to me because:
- I was a top law student. I graduated from NYU Law magna cum laude and Order of the Coif (top 10%), and a member of the Executive Board on NYU Law Review.
- I was a top lawyer. In 2012 and 2013, I was named a Rising Star in New York Superlawyers, a magazine that tracks the top 2.5% of lawyers in New York in 2012 and 2013.
- I worked at a top law firm. Debevoise & Plimpton, The #1 Law Firm according to one set of measures by American Lawyer over the last 10 years (I don’t think it’s #1, but it is up there). While at Debevoise, I won the very first Cyrus Vance Access to Justice Award (an award which has gone to much more important people than me):
- I am a top-rated law tutor to top law students at top schools. For some years, on the side, I tutored law school students at Harvard, Texas, Columbia, NYU and other schools. (Mansfield Park was my pseudonym for some time).
- And check out my students’ results (this is a real transcript of a real student I worked with):
* * *
Now, I used to tutor law students directly, one on one.
I love to help students succeed. I hate the way law school is taught. Professors test you on issue-spotting, but never teach you how to issue-spot. And you can’t even learn from your mistakes: you will never get a marked-up exam. The only thing you get back is your grade. This course does exis actly what a professor should do: Give you a chance to practice, make mistakes and correct them. I can’t reach everyone personally. Even if I spent every waking hour tutoring, I couldn’t help everyone I wanted. So have a life, and tutoring was beginning to fill all of my extra hours. So I decided I had to create this online course to help more law students The cavalry has arrived. Lafayette, we are here.
BUY KICK THE CRAP OUT OF LAW SCHOOL
As you have already guessed, what I am about to propose is NOT a general “do well in law school” advice that you read in so many books.
Really, do you need to be to pay good money to be told “Study hard” “Read all the cases” “Eat breakfast the morning of the exam.” (You should do that, but, duh.)
No. You need materials that go beyond the generic and provide specific advice on how to do well in law school.
And, no, this is not a guide that tells you what to do (“get all As!”) without telling you how.
Let’s get real.
You’re smart. (Otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten into law school).
You work hard.
You’ve always known what to do. (Before law school, anyway.)
But now, for the first time, you’re just a little unsure on what you have to do to get good grades in law school.
- Maybe you just started law school, and you don’t know where to begin.
- Maybe you got caught up in the swirl of rumors and other students bragging about how hard they study.
- Maybe you already got your grades back from your first semester and were a little disappointed.
You hear crazy rumors of people reading all night, studying 100 hours a week, obtaining magic outlines, etc.
Even, frankly, your professors’ advice on how to study law is suspect and totally not helpful. In any case, all of your classmates have heard it, so no one gets an advantage.
What if there were a straightforward guide on how to study law the right way, with specific, step-by-step tactics? That is, a guide on exactly how to prepare for and write excellent law school exams:
First, spend 20 minutes reading the question and taking notes. Don’t panic and start writing an answer yet; that will sink you. Next, after reading, sketch out your outline answer. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just do it. Then apply the facts to the law by doing X, Y and Z. You may feel scared at first but facing a totally new set of facts. Everyone is. And here’s what you do if you absolutely get stuck.
A specific set of step-by-step tactics on how to study law and for preparing for and excelling on your law school exams.
I would have really have loved to have something like this on how to study law when I started as a law student.
Eventually I did well. But only after an uneven first year with both really good grades and really bad grades. I felt confused. I felt like I was missing something and riding waves of good luck and bad luck.
I needed a specific system on how to study law.
My second year I tutored first year law students and I was a teaching assistant who graded practice exams. It was from teaching other students and seeing the variety of good and bad answers that I really got to understand the law school exam system.
It’s a cliche but it’s true: you don’t really understand something until you have to teach it to someone.
I never really knew exactly what made up a good exam and how to study law until I had to explain it to other law students and until I actually graded exams myself.
So some years ago, after years of practice (I’m still a full-time attorney), I got the itch to really help some people learn how to study law properly.
I started to tutor law students, and got the itch to put the method I was teaching them to paper. If I was starting from scratch, what would I tell a new law student about how to study law and ace exams? What would they do first? Then what? And what after that?
Some of my students had such basic questions on exams and how to study law, I learned how much they didn’t know and how much bad advice they were getting from well-meaning people – older law students who didn’t get As and law professors who had long forgotten how hard it is to be a 1L.
The only materials they had access to were hard copy books and CDs. The authors of all the “how to study law” and “law school success” books out there had yet to hear of a thing called the Internet.
You don’t need to be a “legal genius” to succeed in law school. Law professors want you to believe that some people are natural born legal geniuses – just like they were in law school – and the rest aren’t.
Based on my own experience with my students, I don’t believe in legal geniuses any more than I believe in the tooth fairy. It is possible to teach someone how to study law the right way.
If you’ve been with me for awhile, on my site law-school-hacker.com as my tutoring students, you know that I believe that the idea of the “legal genius” is just a convenient excuse for law professors not to do their job to teach students how to study law-and not just the law, mind you, but how to write an outstanding law school essay exam.
True, some catch on faster than others, and maybe some small group will never get it.
But for most reasonably smart, diligent and open-minded students, the skills of how to study law and how to write an great law school exam essay can be learned.
Self-styled “bad” law students can become decent law students with the right guidance. And even already great law students can become even better than they already are.
It’s not about being smart or working hard. Both of these things help of course. But neither involves knowing how to study the right way.
It’s about understanding the game (make no mistake, law school is a game) and how to play it.
By working hard at the right things, you will maximize your chances of being an ace law student.
No legal geniuses need apply.
The main problem you face is too many choices. There are way too many things you could do to prepare for your exams and only have 168 hours a week. Since you’re still new to this, even if you have one semester under your belt, you don’t know what how to study law effectively so that you are maximizing your preparations for your final exams.
You don’t need to work 24/7 to do well in law school.
The best performing law students, in fact, sleep well and take care of themselves. They know how to study law. They are never overwhelmed and never pull all nighters because they know exactly, step by step, what they need to do.
BUY KICK THE CRAP OUT OF LAW SCHOOL
What I’ve got for you: An online program that will teach you how to get top grades
Let me be clear: this course is a work in progress. I am inviting you to be a charter member of KICK THE CRAP OUT OF LAW SCHOOL (KTCOOLS). If you enroll now at the deeply discounted introductory rate, and you will still get all the improvements that come along the way. First, this means that when we add new lessons, questions, and videos, you will get immediate access while having paid an insanely good price because you’re actually going to be a crucial part in how the content is developed. Here’s how the course will work:
- Start the course online. It’s ready now, and will keep on getting better with time
- Ask me questions on the site by commenting on lessons.
- Each week, there will be more content added, which you can access immediately.
- When the topic calls for it, I’ll call up some of my lawyer or professor friends and get awesome guest interviews for you, pinpointing exactly what you want to know. You’ll get a transcript of that as well.
- I’ll do regular Q&A calls so we can attack issues and difficulties you may have in preparing for law exams. It’s your chance to have me clarify anything that might not be totally clear to you.
The lessons walk you through my best recommendations on smart, tactical preparation and exam-taking strategy, step by step by step.
The course progresses so that at each point, you’ve got something valuable you can use right away, but you’re also building something bigger.
Also, your participation will help shape this course. I know what’s worked for me, for my law school classmates, my best lawyer friends, and for my tutoring students.
But what if that’s not exactly what you need? Here, you can tell me what you need. If the group needs a lot more on how to create great outlines without going insane, I’ll add more material on that. If the group wants to really dive into topic-specific exam taking advice (how is a contracts exam different form a con law exam?), we’ll do that. And if there’s something I don’t cover that many of you want to hear about (say, acing your legal research and writing course? How to get on to law review?), we’ll develop a killer strategy for it.
Just for you. This course will be a kind of group coaching or tutoring program.
Your specific needs get met, your deep concerns and worries get tackled. And you get the best price that will ever be offered in the history of anything. What’s in this course? After talking with many different students, getting feedback and suggestions, and giving it months of thought, here’s how I’ve organized things, at least for now (I may go back and change this later).
1. The Fundamentals
http://www.nyulawreview.org/about/mastheads/2002-03-vol-77-78
First things first: Why are you in law school? You don’t want to start with something so mushy? Sorry. It’s not mush at all. It is incredibly important. Before you can master how to study law, you must have a concrete answer to this question. And that answer must resonate with who you are as a person. The best law students I’ve observed over the years were extremely motivated by something specific and they really, sincerely wanted it. It just isn’t enough to have some vague idea that you want to do well in law school. Law school is too demanding and annoying for you to do well because of some vague goal or one that isn’t your own. Maybe your parents wanted you to be in law school or because you “like arguing.” You need a concrete goal, something to aim towards that makes sense of your hard work in law school. Without a specific goal, you will drift. If you drift, you won’t get As. Now, to be clear, this goal does not have to be what you want to do with the rest of your life. I know plenty of people who changed their minds after law school.
One guy I know graduated in the top 5 – not top 5%, but top 5, like Mitch McDeere in The Firm. After three years as a lawyer he stopped and became a computer game programmer. You can change your mind later. But if you’re invested in law school, you need to have a clear goal to reach for in 5 years to make it all worth it. While I said I would avoid general and crappy advice, this is not just pie in the sky crap. This is important. You can only master the step-by-step tactics better if you know exactly why you absolutely need to learn this material.
2. Introduction to the Issue Spotting Essay Exam OK, so now you know why you’re in law school. Next step to learning how to study law? Get acquainted with the law school issue spotting exam. This is starting at the end, but the goal is to do well in law school. In this case, it’s an understanding that law school is about final exams, the standard issue-spotting essay exam. It always amazes me how many students expend so much energy on things that ultimately contribute nothing to doing well on the final exam. Understand: law school IS final exams. That is what you are aiming towards the whole semester, from day one. Other students and even the professor will constantly try to distract you from this one objective. You will face all sorts of pressures to expend energy on a million things other than preparing for your final exams. This is one of the meatiest modules in the course, because there is a lot lots to cover. Once you’ve completed module 1, you’ll have a theoretical overview on what it takes to do well in law school. We’re still not at tactics yet. We’re still just at “what,” not “how.” But you need to understand “what” to correctly apply “how.” After this module, the most important thing you will learn is what not to waste your time on. The rest of the modules are dedicated to teaching you the critical, specific, step-by-step “how” to do well in law school. Whatever your professors throw at you, you’ll be ready with a general strategy compelling message that pulls them toward you.
- What is a law school issue spotting essay exam, and why is it unlike anything I have faced before law school? (Skip this part if you have already taking at least one set of exams.)
- What kinds of answers are law professors looking for on these exams, and what kinds of answers are guaranteed to get you middle of the pack grades?
- What obstacles do most students face in trying to do well in law school? I am not taking about conceptual roadblocks, but also psychological obstacles, both self-imposed and those put there by your peers and even your professors!
- What tools do you need to prepare to do well on your law school exams?
- What things should you avoid doing in preparing for your law school exams?
You’ve probably encountered these ideas before, but you might not have done anything with them. That’s why the blueprint doesn’t just give you information. It provides Next Action worksheets that translate the ideas into action. And if you’re still stuck, just pop into the forums and we can get you moving again.
3: Exam-writing mechanics I (Foundational tactics) This is the module that gets deep into the how-to. You’ll build the first pieces of your specific exam-taking strategies which you can take and apply immediately. I start with exam-writing mechanics because, for some of you, you are already near the end of your semester and need to know how to do this now. I work backwards. The work you’ll do in this module has one purpose: to get you to start building your exam-taking muscles. Because when you have this skill developed (and it can only be developed through repeated, deliberate, conscious practice) you will find your final exams to be clear. Some of the things we’ll talk about in this module are:
- Why is it so hard to answer an issue spotting exam well? (Answer: how well did you ride a bike the first time you got on one?)
- How to plan and structure a great exam answer.
- How to think like a lawyer . . . by talking to your client!
- How to take a transactional approach to exams by focusing on parties and specific events.
- How to master IRAC by applying my “voice-switching” approach.
- How to use the “two level ping-pong match” approach to never got lost on your exam.
- Ping pong match one: He said, she said.
- Ping pong match two: Fact, law, fact, law…
What is cool about this module is that by following and practicing the advice I provide here, you can immediately start to write clearer, stronger, better issue-spotting exams. If you are towards the end of the semester, this Module 3 will give you immediate tactics to apply to your law school exams. 4: Exam-writing mechanics II: Advanced Tactics Once you’ve mastered basic exam writing tactics, it’s time to understand how to other more advanced tactics come into play. Notice that this is where most “law school success” start. They talk about high-level ideas (“getting to maybe” and “forks in the road”) without telling you first how to answer a basic law school question. If you start blindly applying advanced tactics without understanding the basic framework for answering a law school final exam question, your time spent studying these advanced tactics are wasted. But if you apply these advanced tactics after mastering the basic tactics, you will do well on your exams. These are the tactics that will make the difference between getting Bs and getting As. Module 4 builds on Module 3 and gives you some simple, smart tactics to impress your professor, including:
How to tailor your approach to specific kinds of professors (“ivory tower” professors want slightly different answers than “in the trenches, I had to kill another lawyer with a shovel” law professors).
- How to study your professor (do limited research for their academic writings).
- Specific scripts to use in particular, tricky situations.
- Specific phrases to avoid at all costs on exams.
5: Outlining OK, so now we take a step away from specific exam tactics and talk about another extremely important skill to master – writing your outline. Module 5 builds on the exam-writing Modules 3 and 4 by teaching you:
- What to put in your outline.
- More importantly, what to keep out of your outline.
- How to structure your outline – how to use “color sample” approach to arranging cases.
- How long should my outline be?
- How to draft a separate “grand ideas” or “hypotheticals” outline.
6: Pre-preparation Once you know how to write an exam and outline, you will understand exactly what preparation before law school will be most effect. In this section, I review:
- Pre-preparation techniques.
- Good materials to buy.
- Materials not to buy.
Bonus Module 1: Exam writing mechanics III: Approaches to Specific Subjects This module has some nifty tweaks and extras that make for very nice “add-ons.” We’ll cover very concrete tips for answering exams in the following subjects you will cover your first year:
- Contracts
- Torts
- Civ Pro
- Property
- Criminal Law
- Constitutional Law
- Administrative Law
BUY KICK THE CRAP OUT OF LAW SCHOOL
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: OK, what if I try it and don’t love it?
A: You can test drive the course. If you don’t like it, just cancel within 45 days of your first payment, and we’ll refund your money. No worries, no hard feelings.
I think you will find that my step-by-step tips on how to study law are unique and helpful, that the worksheets will help you apply these techniques, and that your fellow students will be a huge source of support (and you will be able to grab my ear and have me answer your questions for no additional charge – I will give you individual advice that previously I only gave my tutoring students).
You will find that this entire experience is worth not just the modest price (remember, so-called law prep courses start at several thousand dollars), but also your time and attention.
Again, if you don’t agree, you can cancel within 45 days of your first payment, and we will part as friends.
By the way, if you stick around, you will have early access to new materials I create. Once the core six modules of the course are complete, you will still have access to advanced and bonus material that I throw in down the line, and to the goodies and bonuses I add later to stack value and make the course even better. It’s my goal to make sure there’s always valuable new material for you to enjoy during your law school journey (and after).
Q: What makes KTCOOLS better than Law Preview or other courses?
A: Other programs buy into the professor’s view of things. They tend to provide you “previews” of substantive areas as well. But they spend very little time on exam-specific tactics and don’t give you comprehensive practice doing issue spotting.
Q: Can you guarantee that I will get As?
A: No. Seriously, if that is what you want — a guarantee of As — I do not think this course is for you. Anyone who tells you that is lying. I can tell you that the techniques you will learn are tested and have resulted in students at the best law schools getting top grades. The difference is you. You need to work hard. And you need to be creative on your own. But I give you all the tools you need to do well.
Q: Do I really need to study over the summer? Do I really need this?
A: That’s up to you. Do you really want to wait and find out only later that you should have studied over the summer?