Beginner’s Guide to Law School

Okay, so you have arrived safely to law school orientation. Congratulations, I guess. You just committed yourself to three years of pure hell. I’m kidding, of course. The real hell doesn’t begin until after you graduate and start practicing law. Since you already paid the tuition deposit and promised your parents you would see it through to the end, there is no turning back now. So, let’s see what we can do to make your life a bit easier. Here is the Beginner’s Guide to Law School.

Take your Beginner’s Guide to Law School and head over to the law school book store. You will need one of those industrial size dollies and a platinum American Express. You already have the twelve-page list of books you are required to purchase. Contracts, Torts, Property, Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure, yada yada yada. Now you will search for what you really need. The case summaries. Case summaries are the law student’s version of Cliff Notes. They provide a detailed synopsis of the facts of each case in your regular text, as well as the legal analysis and the opinion of the Court. Rather than reading a hundred pages of case law each night, you can get by with reading ten or twenty. Sure, sure, you’re probably saying to yourself, “I want to do well, not skate by with some cheater’s tool.” Well, bookmark this page, buddy, because you’ll be back in a few weeks with a new pair of prescription glasses, begging for some more advice.

Okay, now that you’ve got your case summaries, it’s time to make two sets of friends. The first set is the cool set, the other students who saw fit to purchase case summaries, and not just as a supplement. These are the people you will bitch and moan to over the next three years, the people you will drink with, the friends you will confide in, the ones who will join you in making fun of the professors. The second set is the geeks. These are the people you will get your outlines from at the end of the semester while you are preparing for final exams. These are the friends who will explain the tax laws to you after you skipped half the semester on a wild bender. These are the folks who will sign you into class. Don’t think for one second you will not need both sets of friends over the next three years of law school.

Okay, now that you have your case summaries and your two sets of friends, you are ready to rock and roll. Crack open a beer and email this Beginner’s Guide to Law School to your cool set of friends. Do it before you get good and drunk, or you may end up emailing it to one of the geeks. Then the jig is up. Come exam time, you’ll be shit out of luck. Thanks for reading the Beginner’s Guide to Law School.