THE LARGEST COLLECTION OF LEGAL JOBS ON EARTH
LawCrossing Feature
Secrets of Success at Law School Part-1 by Surajit Sen Sharma
The research available on the secrets of achieving success in law school isn’t voluminous, and most of what is there contains issues and statistics quite incomprehensible to the uninitiated: However, in searching across the sea of data, I chanced upon a little research paper by Anne M. Enquist, called “Unlocking the Secrets of Highly Successful Legal Writing Students,” 2008, that took a practical approach and found facts that match reality.
Activities that Measure Real Performance
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Note-taking and reviewing notes
Possibilities of a Law Student:
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Spending a significant percentage of one’s time actually writing
The mentioned research was done by pairing students
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who consistently achieved different grades and studied how the students spent their time at law schools with
Spending a significant part of the writing time in revising, editing and proofreading
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the following activity parameters:
Researching efficiently and having effective reading strategies
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Managing time efficiently
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Keeping one’s research and briefs organized,
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Attending class
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Researching/reading cases
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Outlining
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Using the professor as a primary resource
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Reading textbook/class handouts
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Discussing the issues in the brief outside of class
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Drafting
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Reading the packets
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Note-taking/reviewing notes
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Working on oral arguments
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Working on class exercises
The research found that interestingly the successful law
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Revising, editing, and proofreading
students shared almost identical approaches towards
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Reviewing professor’s comments
their work: “‘hit the ground running,’ work steadily, and
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Discussing with others outside of class
switch into an even higher gear as the deadline neared
often by outlining
with other law students The Template for Success:
so that they could ‘finish strong.’ Their approaches Activities that Lead to Real Success as a Law
were so similar, in fact, that at times they seemed like
Student:
templates for success.”
The research found that successful students spent
Surprisingly all successful students studied reported
proportionately more time and effort in the following
individually that they held in-class small group
activities among those followed:
exercises as a “waste of time … when they were not led by the professor.”
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