Reading the Law

Reading assignments in your first year—stacks and stacks of cases, articles, and more—will be the first law school beast you’ll face. Nearly every new law student reads that there are assigned readings before law school even starts—yet every year there are students surprised that there are actually assigned readings before law school even starts. There are actually assigned readings before law school even starts.

Your law professors will not spend the first hour with polite small talk, shallow previews of the course, administrative housekeeping and office hours, and then dismiss you for the real class to start on day two, as in your undergraduate years. Your law professors will expect you to have read the case assignments. And they will expect you to be prepared to discuss those cases. With an expert…them.

I was one of these sadly misinformed late-starters. It never occurred to me that we would really have reading assignments for the first day of class. I just hoped—assumed, really—that I could pay attention and absorb all that stuff. So I started out a little behind, which felt like being massively behind. There were new assignments every day, so in addition to playing catch up I was supposed to keep racing ahead. It was awful. This was a very bad habit.

Being behind in your first year of law school is not where you want to be. From your very first day of law school, you will be responsible for mountains of materials—and you need to stay up with it or the mountain will just continue to grow and the hope of every getting caught up will fade. So the simple, absolutely crucial step is to keep up with your reading. This isn’t just some empty tip: it goes to why building good habits is so important. In this type of academic marathon, staying on task and staying current is only going to happen with serious, sustained effort…and good habits to keep that effort up.

As soon as you know your schedule (which your law school will send you in some form well before classes start), check immediately on the assigned readings for each course. Usually these are posted online. Do not wait. Buy the casebooks, and dig in.

But…staying current with your reading assignments is an overwhelming task that might even be a waste of time. I remember some professors assigning 40 pages of reading a night—and the readings can be very tedious. On the other hand, smart reading helps prepare you for class, and you can build a better understanding of the law—which can definitely help in exams. You’ll find questions that will be clarified in class, and as you do the reading, many casebooks contain commentary that helps in the opposite direction: class will make more sense, and you’ll better understand the law that you’re learning. Reading your assignments each night is one of the best habits you can develop—simply because it helps you stay on top of your studies and realize the amount of material you are expected to learn.

So, knowing that reading is important, and also knowing that there might not be enough hours in the day to read completely everything you are assigned—how do you get the most out of reading?