Resources for First Year Law Students: Prepare for 1L Year

This book is for entering law students and law school orientation programs about how to study law. It covers how lawyers use the law, how the legal system works, how to study, how to read and brief case decisions, how to participate in class, how to prepare course outlines, and how to study for exams and write essay exam answers.

Beyond One L: Stories About Finding Meaning and Making a Difference in Law is inspired by Scott Turow’s One L, the classic account of a first-year law student’s experience at Harvard Law School. With an introduction by Turow, Beyond One L explores first-, second-, and third-year experiences in the decades since One L was published. It then moves beyond law school to tell the stories of taking the bar, searching for judicial clerkships, practicing law, and leaving law practice to become a teacher or judge.

Plain English for Lawyers has been a favorite of law students, legal writing teachers, lawyers, and judges for almost 40 years. The sixth edition, now co-authored by Amy Sloan, updates this classic text, including new chapter exercises, while preserving all the approaches that make it such a standard in the field. It remains (in size only!) a little book, small enough and palatable enough not to intimidate over-loaded law students.

1L of a Ride provides a candid, comprehensive roadmap to both academic and emotional success in law school's crucial first year. 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 more.

A Short & Happy Guide to Being a Law Student is a must-read whenever worry or doubt creep in. In this volume you will find essential wisdom for the study of law and life. Learn from the unprecedented ten-time recipient of the Professor of the Year award how to be your best in and out of class, how to prepare for exams, how to succeed on exams, how to put your best foot forward in a job interview, how to find teachers to inspire you, what to do in classes that leave you uninspired, how to cope with stress and how to create value in everything you do.

This concise, plain-spoken book is an indispensable guide for beginning law students. Field-tested by students all over the country for more than a dozen years for its practicality and its psychological realism, it has proved an invaluable introduction to cutting through the fog of case analysis; minimizing the bewilderment of the Socratic method; studying law; writing for law school; preparing for exams and exam writing; managing precious time; and coping with the emotional stress of law study.