Workload

I can happily say that school is nowhere near as time consuming as I expected. It is still challenging and you will be busier than undergrad, but it can be done. Teach

1L isn’t hard if you make an effort to keep ahead of the work, and make work a priority. Mary

For full-time students, the overall pressure is, surprisingly, less that that for part-time students. Full-time students have every hour of every day for three years to complete the coursework. Part-time students have evening hours weekdays to finish the same amount of work in four years. Do the math. While the full-time student can, with careful planning, end up with at least a couple of hours each weekday with nothing to do, and can also potentially end up with most weekends free, the part-time student often works nine to five, then attends school until close to bedtime, and will have to play catch-up each weekend throughout the semester. Read what the full-time students have to say:

About 15 study hours per week per course. Then after midterms, about 8 hours per week per course, after you realize that briefing is largely a waste of time. Mary

I try to get as much done as possible during the day, that way I have evenings (mostly) free. With the exception of outlining or legal research, I’m usually done by six or seven. It’s all a trade off. Some people chose to hang out between classes and work in the evening. It’s all a matter of personal preference. Don’t be afraid to try switching your schedule around the first couple of weeks. You’ll find your groove, then it’s just a matter of settling in for the ride. FSU2005

Law school full-time is a hefty undertaking as far as workload goes. Part-time law school is arguably more work—you spend all day in a real job, then spend your evenings in class. Then you spend your weekends in the library. For four years. In comparison, the full-time program is easier; it’s a short, sharp shock rather than a drawn-out episode. It’s not wise to pick the part-time program as a way of making the process less stressful, unless, of course, you don’t work full-time during the day.

But part-time school, full-time work, and family commitments are manageable: If you are able to organize your time efficiently and if you’re prepared to plan far ahead and make sacrifices when appropriate, you can fit it all in. And if part-time evening school is the only way you have of getting a JD, then it’s the only way you have—time to suck it up and get it over with.

I work a full-time, forty-hour-a-week job while attending an evening law school program. Most of my class works full-time, and I don’t know anyone who could take off the summer from their real job for a clerkship. It seems it’s not even really an important issue, it’s just not something most of us could do, and I don’t know anyone who is concerned about it. It’s obviously not crucial to clerk to get a job on graduation. lawhound

Most professors realize that part-time students have a lot of demands on their time and try to do what they can to accommodate us. Jellybean

It’s hard, but definitely doable. I work at a stressful job (40-50 hours per week), and go to school three nights a week, and managed to achieve a class ranking of 6 out of 85 at the end of the first semester. You really have to be both motivated and dedicated, but if you put your mind to it, it will work. Mardee

Be prepared for the fact that you will not have much of a social life, but do sneak in leisure time when you can. Otherwise it’s too easy to get burnt out. And it really is about time management. I don’t read when I get home from class around 10 p.m.—that’s my time to relax. But I do read, study, and write every night I’m not in class and always spend at least one day of the weekend studying (and usually the full weekend as it gets closer towards exams and legal writing deadlines). Mardee

Part-time students tell a tale of trying desperately fit it all in. No doubt, it’s easier for traditional part-time students who have little else to do except go to work and then go to school, but for the nontrad, the part-time schedule is not the blessing in disguise that many think it is. They will often end up waking up at six to get the kids ready, then spend a full day at work, followed by an evening of law school. Exhausted, the parent/employee/student crawls into bed, not having spent nearly enough time with the kids (or spouse), and knowing that the weekend is going to be spent in the library catching up. It may, in reality, be simpler to borrow the funds to attend law school full-time instead of trying to work your way through law school part-time. Here’s what the part-timers think:

It is time-consuming and grueling. My school only requires us to take 3 classes at night, then we take a few in the summers to make up for it. I do wind up with some free time, mainly because I set myself on a schedule, and allow time for it (although mostly my free time is eaten up by stuff like laundry, grocery shopping, etc.). If you’re married, and your spouse is willing to take on those chores, so much the better. Mardee

Nightschool is a lot of work, but definitely manageable. As far as school selection goes, choose the school in the area you want to practice in. The lower ranked the school, the smaller the area you want to work in should be. uke

From what I’ve seen of my own schedule and others, part-timers who work doing the day and go to school in the evening have little free time. And what little I have, I have to plan for carefully. I’m hoping it gets better next year, because right now my schedule pretty much sucks. uke

Briefing

Briefing is the process of taking a judicial opinion and reducing it to a shortened form, highlighting the legal point of the case. That is, by briefing a case, you essentially summarize it, writing the summary in a form that makes it easy for you to recall what the case was about and answer questions on the case in class. Most briefs are organized into sections, such as the facts, the decision (or holding), the judge’s reasoning behind the decision, and perhaps a more in-depth analysis. And that’s about all you need to know about briefing. You will undoubtedly see plenty of briefs in your first few weeks of law school, and that’s enough to pick up the skill of briefing.

There are three things to remember about briefing: First, briefing is like outlining (more on this later) in that it’s used as means to ensure you are reading the cases and learning how to pick out what you need to know. You need to know who won, and why. If you just read the case without briefing (at least, at the start of the semester), then you run the risk of not following the “formula” that a brief sets out for picking up what you need to be picking up from your reading of the case. In essence, briefing is a tool used to teach you how to cut through the crap of most judicial opinions, get past the judge’s ego, and get to the point of the opinion. (This is not just flippant, by the way. Legal opinions are not written by law professors for law students: they’re written by judges—for other judges. They also contain many issues, while you’re almost always focusing on one. This distillation process is thus a vital skill. You need to learn to brief, at least in the early stages of your legal education.)

Second, you don’t brief to create a permanent record of the case for your notes. You should normally take away a handful of sentences about each case. Anything more and you’re studying hard, but not smart. You rarely refer to cases by name on an exam (except for Constitutional Law and a few cases in Civil Procedure). You do need to understand the legal meaning of the main cases. Don’t spend too much time creating beautiful, detailed briefs with the thought that they will come in handy later in the semester for your all-important outlines. They won’t. What you need to know from each case will be taken down in the form of notes during the class—you will not need to refer to briefs again for any reason, and if you are referring to them, again, you’re doing something wrong. They are disposable, and they have little or no use beyond the class in which that particular case was discussed.

Third, it is important to learn to brief properly at the start of the first semester. Briefing is an important—but simple—skill. Spend the first few weeks briefing cases fully, making sure you are comfortable picking out what you need to know and understand. After that, start cutting back on the briefing—they can get shorter, you can rely more on your notes you take in the casebook as you’re reading (a process called book briefing), and you can spend the time you save doing more useful things, such as outlining. (Outlining is vastly more important than briefing. If there’s even a thought where you should spend your time, spend it on outlining.) That written, don’t dismiss briefing as unnecessary—it is a vital skill. It is, however, a skill that takes little time to master, and if you’re spending most of your time briefing cases halfway through the semester, something’s wrong.

Different colored highlighters for briefing? That can be summed up in one word: no.

As you learn to become more concise, you’ll eventually be able to brief a case in a few paragraphs. Mardee

I think briefing each case after the initial month or so is a waste of time unless it works for you. However, you absolutely should brief cases at least for the first two months. It not only helps to hone your legal writing skills, but also helps you to actually read a case. Mardee

If you’re concerned, you can find samples online. It’s not something to worry about. Rat

Once you’ve briefed the first few cases in each class, you might want to minimize your briefing to a few key words that evoke the case and what black letter law was brought out in the case. Book briefing is okay for class-preparedness, but if you want to use your cases in your outlines, you probably want to write down a sentence or two on each case as you come to it and save work at the end of the semester—trudging through the case books is not the most rational way to study for your exams. chillout

I did full briefs for a while but that grew tiring and seemed like a waste of time. Once I figured out how to read a case and why we were reading it, I simply did a capsule brief. This is nothing more than a short paragraph (for each issue) discussing the issue, holding and reasoning of the case. These ended up being the backbone of my outline. No Longer Confused

Take notice of the facts, holding, issues, and analysis. If you get these things in every brief, you’ll never end up in class (like I did) having a lovely brief prepared containing great analysis of the court’s detailed legal reasoning, but forgetting the basics like who the court ruled in favor of. Believe me, if you want to look like an idiot, then all you have to do is umm and ahh when the professor asks, “Tell the class which party prevailed in X v. Y?” Oldguy

You will get faster. The ability to pull the right information out of the cases (and fact patterns on exams) and write in in a coherent, accurate manner is useful when exam time comes. And that skill is only developed by repetition. Toni

Canned briefs—those prepared by various commercial study aid publishers—vary in quality. Substantial ones (i.e., more than a few paragraphs) and those linked to a particular casebook are the ones to buy if you feel you need them as a back-up. Then you can look up your case, read about it in detail, and you’ll be set. (Note, however, that canned briefs should never be used as a substitute for at least occasional briefing on your own—you do need to learn how to brief and pull information out of a larger piece of writing, as that’s what your exams will be like.) Those that are thin on the word count and are not linked to your casebook are the ones to avoid. There are bad canned briefs: they are easy to create and easy to publish. In particular, forget online brief services or those contained on CD-ROMs for your computer—they are generally of inferior quality.

Chances are, once you start law school, you’ll be bombarded with offers from various companies trying to sell you their study materials before you realize that you don’t actually need them and you’ve been ripped off. As a general rule, stick with the premium companies for your study materials, and if you can buy materials keyed to your casebook, all the better. The more generic you go, the less helpful they will be. You may find that you’re better off spending five minutes scanning the case you haven’t briefed instead of spending two minutes reading a badly-written canned brief. (You should also take the time, before you buy, to compare canned briefs for a common case that you’ve just read. In fact, re-read it a few times—both in the casebook and in the various commercial books—which will help you both in choosing the better book and in honing your briefing skills.)

To save on expenditures, by the way, you might agree with your study group to each buy canned briefs for such-and-so casebook. (You’ll all have the same classes, and so will be able to share.) This way, everyone will have ready access to the briefs, but your costs will be minimized. As they’re not an essential resource, there’s no harm if you don’t get to them all. Again, outlining is far more important.

Canned briefs can be an absolute lifesaver when you haven’t been able to do the reading for a class. No matter how organized and diligent you are, there will be times when you won’t be able to get to the reading. MaggieC

This is from the chapter “First Year” on pages 171-78.