Law School Success

Whether you are new to law school or have made it through a few semesters, there are always ways to improve your process and performance. This lesson uses your answers to help you determine the best CALI Law School Success lessons to help you meet your goals and tailors the advice depending on where you are in your law school career.

This lesson helps students understand where cases fit in a final exam answer and develop arguments based on cases. Students' exam arguments should improve using this lesson's techniques.

This lesson also includes video commentary from the author that expands on the material in the lesson.

Law students are excellent readers, and this skill will lay the foundation for success throughout life. However, reading in law school requires more precision than previous educational activities. This lesson will deepen individuals reading skills specifically within the context of legal reading.

This lesson explores one of the fundamental lawyering skills, which is to think like a lawyer, or analyze. Students will go through basic analysis exercises, so they can master this technique prior to writing exams.

This lesson also includes video commentary from the author that expands on the material in the lesson.

First-year law students often understand the law and know the right conclusion, but struggle to apply the law thoroughly in order to maximize their scores. This lesson is designed to help law students who may have received feedback that their analysis is conclusory.

Have you ever compared your essay to a sample answer, or one with a higher grade, and wondered what was different about yours? Especially if you seemed to use all the correct law? It's likely that you aren't using your facts enough!

This lesson will explain why it's important that you use your facts, as well as help you to do just that!

Throughout law school, students will be asked to assess their own essays by comparing them to a model or sample student answer provided by their professor. It can often be difficult to distinguish one’s work from the model. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish what a student knows, from what they wrote down. Experienced legal writers understand that subtle differentiation in language changes the meaning of what was written. This lesson will provide students with strategies for self-assessment, so that they can become critical judges of their work, and consequently precise legal writers.

This lesson will teach you the best ways to prepare for exams, and the best ways to organize your response on the day of your exam.

This lesson focuses on case briefing. The lesson will guide students through cases identifying the most important part of cases to prepare for classes.

This lesson will take you step-by-step through a method of representing the content from cases in an outline.

A basic introduction (or refresher!) about sources of law, court structure, and precedent.

This lesson explains the different types of counterarguments and shows you how to best integrate them into your analysis.

Creating Study Aids is part of the Academic Support series of CALI Lessons. This lesson introduces you to law school study aids. It begins with a brief overview of self-regulated learning and Bloom's learning taxonomy. Then, the lesson introduces law school study aids by pairing them with learning objectives at each level of the taxonomy. Finally, the lesson concludes with an activity designed to help you reflect on your learning. It can be used as an introduction, supplement, or as review.

This podcast provides 10 practical tips and best practices, along with common mistakes you can avoid, for law school essay exam writing.

This podcast will help you understand active reading. It will provide you with tips to help you read more efficiently for law school and strategies to improve your reading skills to be more fully prepared for class.

This podcast provides critical information that you should consider before you begin to study for the bar exam. There is a lot to think about even before you start your bar review, whether that’s meeting deadlines or preparing for hurdles. This podcast offers tips and considerations to help you navigate the process more smoothly.

This podcast discusses methods to use to make you more comfortable with class participation, including case briefing templates. The podcast will provide you with the opportunity to do a freewriting exercise, explore some research in the field, and learn a few tips on how to hone your approach to speaking out loud in class. 

Acknowledging that law school is a competitive environment, this podcast catalogs areas of law school that are most competitive. And, it provides four tips for doing your best in law school.

In this podcast, Melissa Hale, academic support professional and fellow first-generation student, speaks with two of her students about what it’s like to be a first-generation student in law school.

This podcast discusses early warning signs that a law student may be struggling, and gives advice on how to effectively overcome these struggles. The podcast addresses students who may be experiencing difficulty understanding the material as well as students who are having a hard time keeping up with the volume of work.

This podcast discusses the benefits of using the IRAC structure (Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion) when outlining your answer to a law school exam essay. 

Everyone has heard the rumors about law school. Do your first semester grades determine the job you will get after law school? Do you really not have any time to eat, shower, or see friends? In this podcast, four Academic Support professionals take on a series of law school myths. 

This podcast discusses tips to help you remember more information and to perform better on law school exams. Three learning strategies are explained: spaced repetition, the testing effect, and cognitive schema. Briefly defined, spaced repetition incorporates periodic studying throughout the semester. The testing effect can be more challenging and is exactly what it sounds like; it is testing yourself to see whether or not you know the material. Lastly, the podcast explains how to create a cognitive schema as an organizational structure that you can use to retain information.

For more on this subject, look at the CALI Lesson "Secrets to Improved Memorization."

In this podcast, four Academic Support professionals provide strategies for dealing with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic while in law school. The pandemic introduced even greater uncertainty into an already stressful environment. This podcast provides tools to succeed at law school during these unprecedented times.