The Complete Law School Companion , livre ebook

Turner Publishing Company - Jeff Deaver

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

132 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Offers complete, accessible information on every topic of concern to law students ranging from the LSAT, the Bar Exam, Law Review, computerized research and videotape study aids to obtaining that important clerkship or job. Includes recent data on demographics of law school applicants, current salaries for a variety of legal careers, nontraditional courses, legal clinics, detailed discussions regarding the latest law trends such as deregulation and insider trading. Will appeal to law students at all stages of their education.

Sujets

LSAT

Legal Education

Droit et juridique

Law School Admission Test

Law

Informations

Publié par	Turner Publishing Company
Date de parution	01 avril 1992
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781620459539
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0898€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

The Complete Law School Companion
How to Excel at America s Most Demanding Post-Graduate Curriculum
Revised and Updated
JEFF DEAVER
Recognizing the importance of preserving what has been written, it is a policy of John Wiley Sons, Inc. to have books of enduring value published in the United States printed on acid-free paper, and we exert our best efforts to that end.
Copyright 1984 by John Wiley Sons, Inc. Copyright 1992 by Jeff Deaver
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc.
AH rights reserved. Published simultaneously in Canada.
Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act without the permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Request for permission or further information should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Deaver, Jeff.
The complete law school companion : how to excel at America s most demanding post-graduate curriculum / Jeff Deaver. - 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-471-55491-X (alk. paper)
1. Law-Study and teaching-United States. I. Title.
KF283.D4 1992
340 .07 73-dc20 91-41666
ISBN 0-471-55491-X
Printed in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16
To the memory of my grandfather, Nelson W, Rider, Esq., sine qua non, and, of course, for Helen
I hope to derive . . . something like a clew to guide us in our inquiries into what should be a proper education for a lawyer. And, in the first place, I find no one of the powers and faculties that Providence has given him which can be safely or harmlessly neglected. He will find use for them all; and, what is more, he will need them at all times in their full vigor and activity, to meet the demands which are made upon him, if he ever rises to the true dignity of the profession he has chosen.
Emory Washburn The Study and Practice of Law
[W]hat is the orientation of the school with regard to the profession? What does it offer that you need? ... To which the answer is: almost everything you will need for your practice.
Karl Llewellyn The Bramble Bush
Contents

Preface to the Second Edition
Chapter One An Introduction
Chapter Two Is It for You?
Chapter Three The Admission Process: The LSAT and Other Hurdles
Chapter Four Mysteries Revealed: What s Law School Really Like?
Chapter Five Daily Survival in the Classroom
Chapter Six How to Brief Cases
Chapter Seven Sample Briefs
Recap 1:
Chapter Eight The Course Outline: Purpose and Contents
Chapter Nine The Course Outline: Putting It All Together
Recap 2: The Course Outline
Chapter Ten Preparing for Exams
Chapter Eleven Taking Exams
Chapter Twelve Sample Exams
Recap 3: Preparing for and Taking Exams
Chapter Thirteen Writing a Course Paper
Recap 4: Preparing a Course Paper
Chapter Fourteen The Complete Law School Student
The Emotional Aspects of Law School
This Band of Brothers and Sisters (Student Organizations)
The Swing Shift (Night School)
Choices, Choices, Choices (Second- and Third-Year Courses)
Multidegree Programs
Clinical Programs
You Mean I Get Paid, Too? (Summer Clerkships)
A Hand in the Cookie Jar (Law School Ethics)
The 26-Hour Day (The Law Review Experience)
Chapter Fifteen An Afterword
Appendix One The 51 Courts: An Introduction to the American Legal System
Appendix Two Glossary of Legal Terms
Index
Preface to the Second Edition

Since this book was first published in 1984, we have witnessed a number of significant changes in legal education and in the law itself.
The number of students applying to law school has slowed although the number of women and minority law students, in proportion to white male students, continues to grow As the percentage of older and second-career law students increases and as a recession makes jobs scarce, law schools are moving away from a purely academic approach to study and are altering and expanding curricula to provide a practical legal education. Technology has made its way into the classroom and library in the form of laptop computers, video and audio tape study guides, computerized research, and CD-ROM hardware and databases.
Substantively, there have been changes in the type of law graduates practice. Wall Street mania is gone. The battlefield has shifted from boardrooms to bankruptcy courts. Insider-trading cases seem almost nostalgic-from pages of ancient legal history. New issues loom: abortion rights, homelessness, urban financing, prisoners rights, and the use of public money to fund artistic projects. If the 1980s tested the creativity and stamina of commercial and corporate attorneys, the 1990s may very well be the era of constitutional and civil liberties lawyers, as the Bill of Rights is repeatedly put to the test.
Law firms are beginning to recognize that they can no longer maintain a nineteenth-century mentality as we move toward the year 2000. They are, for instance, accommodating attorneys who wish to spend more time with their children and offering day-care arrangements and maternity and paternity leave. On the flip side, however, firms are quick to use newly learned cost-cutting management techniques and are much less reluctant to fire associates and even partners who do not live up to their standards of productivity
With this realignment of the economy, the market for new attorneys in this early part of the decade is at a low point. While it may be easier to get into law school now than in 1984, finding the job you want upon graduation is going to be even harder than it was eight years ago. It is therefore all the more important to do well in school, not simply so that you will graduate near the top of your class but so that you can learn as much law as possible and use the three or four years ahead of you to their best advantage. Bringing your law school educational experience to this lofty level is the goal of the second edition of The Complete Law School Companion .
J. W. D.
New York City , 1991
Chapter One
An Introduction
[ For a glossary of legal terms, see Appendix Two .]
Whether you re considering applying to law school, whether you ve been accepted and are anxiously awaiting the first class session, or whether you re a second-year student who hasn t done quite as well as you d hoped, you may feel that the legal profession is an intricate, incomprehensible puzzle that you d like to be a part of-if only it weren t so, well, intricate and incomprehensible.
For all of you, I have good news and bad news.
The good news is that the material taught in law school is completely understandable by anyone with the intelligence to be accepted for admission in the first place. This is because law, unlike nuclear physics or biochemistry, is an institution regulating human activities on a very visible, familiar level. If you are aware of society itself, you can understand the subject matter of the law.
What s the bad news?
Consider just how many aspects of society must be regulated.
An example: Jane Doe, Esq., wakes up in the morning to her clock radio, makes coffee, heats rolls, and eats breakfast with her husband. She then takes the elevator to the lobby, says Good morning to the doorman, and leaves the building to dodge traffic on the way to the subway that will deliver her to downtown Manhattan, where she is a partner in a large law firm.
A simple scenario. But let s look at what a lawyer sees in those few facts: In the sale of the clock radio, coffee maker, and toaster oven, a lawyer would see federal and state trade regulations and antitrust laws, a state statute called the Uniform Commercial Code governing the sale of the appliances, and the law of negligence and products liability that would govern rights should the toaster, say, catch fire. In the food Ms. Doe and her husband ate for breakfast: the same rules as above, plus federal and state health regulations and statutes. In the gas and electricity in the apartment: state laws and regulations governing the sale and distribution of utility power. In Ms. Doe s relation with her husband: statutes and cases known as domestic relations law. In their apartment lease: the law of real property, contracts, housing and residential building codes, and landlord and tenant law. In their relation with the doorman: the law of agency. In the traffic on the street: state and city traffic laws, insurance law, negligence law, the Uniform Commercial Code again, consumer protection law, lemon laws, and banking law (for financed cars). In Ms. Doe s law firm: partnership law, workers compensation law, tax law, social security law, constitutional and anti-discrimination law, and general tort and contract law.
And working in conjunction with all of these laws is the body of procedural laws that govern how the courts enforce those other rights.
In sum, the bad news is simply this: Law may regulate everyday events, but it deals with a staggering number of them, and it does so in a very complex and detailed way. To be a successful lawyer you must differentiate among and organize all these rules and regulations; to be a successful student, you must do the same.

Two Keys to Success
When I was in school I found that success had little to do with intelligence or magic study techniques. The students who did well had two keys to success:
One, they were disciplined.
Two, they were good at organizing the mass of information they were taught.
The purpose of this book is to give you a technique for key number two-a system for organizing and processing all the information you get in your classes. I call this the Legal Concept Management (LCM) system.
If you follow the LCM techniques as I describe them, you will do well in law school. Very well. But that s a big if, because the LCM approach requires a lot of work-as I mentioned, the other key to success is discipline, which you must provide. Either you re willing to work hard in law school or