Law Student

During the summer, some law students listen to Sum & Substance CDs to prepare for fall classes. Others let their ears take a complete break from the law. For law students who find themselves somewhere inbetween, here is a list of some thought-provoking lectures from some of America’s top law schools. They are available for download to listen on your computer or iPod.

For more information on podcasts or podcasts of interest to law students, visit these articles:

• How and Why Law Students Use Podcasts
• Law School Blog Posts You Might Like #1
• Law School Blog Posts You Might Like #2

A note from a reader:
The summer listening at Law Schools is the integration of computers and the academic curriculum. These pod casts are a blessing for those who are willing to peruse their studies via online means. The same degree of culmination of the combination of technologies is seen in the online certification 000-078 whereby students are connected with learning through technology. The online teaching institutes are designing innovative courses like 000-190 certification to incorporate in their existing lines of specialization. The online certification 000-222 fulfills the needs of the individuals eager to learn the key area concepts and skills the same way as does 000-228.

UPDATE: Real Lawyers Have Blogs says that one law school graduate landed a job with a large firm by blogging.

NOTE: If you are a law student or attorney with a blog, please see the offer to promote your blog at the end of this post.**

As blogging becomes more popular, it is inevitable that law students will increasingly become bloggers. Still, this may be a little surprising considering the immense time pressures that law students face. However, maybe it is exactly that pressure that entices law students to have a blog. That is, maybe writing to a blog is a release of tension, much like journaling used to be.

Marketing
Blogs can also be a form of marketing. For example, Andrew Flusche started his blog, » FULL STORY

Law school isn’t supposed to be about memorization. Unfortunately, most law students encounter at least one closed-book exam that requires memorizing various elements (e.g. criminal law), standards of review (e.g. constitutional law), rules (e.g. property), or other information. Sometimes a student merely wants to memorize a checklist of key issues to spot.

If you are facing a closed-book exam like this, have no fear. The solution is using common memorization tricks that can help you store massive amounts of information, at least, for a few days.

These aren’t late-night television infomercial tricks. And you don’t have to pay for them. These are mnemonic methods frequently taught in bar exam preparation courses.

Just spend 2-3 minutes reviewing the techniques, and select the best one for your law school exam: Mnemonic Techniques and Specific Memory Tricks to Improve Memorization.

Law students, like lawyers, have busy lives and a shortage of free time. That’s why this little tip to save time online is so helpful.

You may have wondered what RSS or this symbol means. It means the website you are reading has an RSS feed, which can be read by Google Reader or another RSS reader. But what is RSS? Watch this short and entertaining video explaining how an RSS reader will save you a lot of time on the web. » FULL STORY

Tired of reading your law school cases? Or maybe you just want to reinforce what you read. Now you can listen to cases on your iPod. Just download the audio file of cases in your law school casebook at AudioCaseFiles.com.

Even better, AudioCaseFiles.com has case briefs, so you can listen to an overview before you read a case, or you can listen to the case briefs as a review for final exams.

The quality of the audio files is excellent, with professional voices that make for easy listening—which is quite an accomplishment for boring cases.

This is a great tool for law students seeking to utilize time while driving, exercising, or sitting on a bus.

Do you have friends who want to go to law school? They may enjoy the new LSAT Blog or the Princeton Review Podcasts.

Want to send a cell phone text message (SMS) from your computer? It’s easy, and free! And you can do it here.

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Imagine you are sitting in your law school class. You think of something you need to tell your friend, and you want to send a quick message to your friend. The friend may not check e-mail for a while. What do you do? Send a text message using Google’s free “Send a Text Message” service. No login is required. Just go to the website and start typing your message.

A similar service is provided by Teleflip, but Teleflip can log your email address. WithTeleflip, you can send an email that shows up on someone’s phone as a text message. Try out this email to text message service.

In addition to these free computer-to-cell-phone text message services, here are 5 more free SMS services.

Losing your class notes before law school final exams could be tragic. Law students interested in free backup solutions can go here: How to Backup Your Documents Online for Free. Scroll to the bottom of the page for a current list of free online backup services.

In the old days, a cowboy could ride into town and no one knew if he was honest or a bank robber. Today, anyone can Google someone’s name to see what has been written about or by the person, and possibly learn about their involvements.

AELR Blog recently discussed this when mentioning a Washington Post article, Harsh Words Die Hard on the Web: Law Students Feel Lasting Effects of Anonymous Attacks, which discusses how one Yale law student’s job hunt was stunted by what was written about her online.

Even more concerning is a website called The Gorb, which allows people to rate and review other people. The reviews are available online like an Amazon.com book review for anyone to see. This site has been criticized by internet commentators. It also raises questions about how libel and defamation laws will be applied.

It will be interesting to see how the reputations of law students, lawyers, and other professionals are affected by the “information age” being applied to personal reputations.

UPDATE 1: Read what one blogger has to say about the legal implications of criticising people online at the Life is Risky blog here: Defamation of Character.

UPDATE 2:A website similar to The Gorb is Rapleaf, a site for rating buyers, sellers, and others.

Many law students use LinkedIn for professional networking and MySpace for social networking. Law students also use a number of other similar services. Wouldn’t it be great to view the pages of all your friends, family, and professional contacts? Now you can.

Using Upscoop.com, you just enter the e-mail and password to your Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, or Hotmail account. Upscoop compares your contacts and displays to you anyone with a page at these websites. It’s very easy and works great!

The process only takes about 30 seconds. If you have a lot of e-mail addresses, the service will e-mail you the results after it looks them up (which could take hours, or even days, if you have many addresses).

Upscoop will search Aim.com, Bebo.com, Classmates.com, Facebook.com, Flickr.com, Flixter.com, Friendster.com, Hi5.com, LinkedIn.com, MySpace.com, Ringo.com, and Tickle.com.

Read a related article on Digg | Digg this story

Interested in giving yourself and your law school a bad name? Just follow the example of these law students. Their actions are disgusting. Read the article.

3L law students know that organization in law school is crucial for success. Here is a nice post about how one law student uses GTD in law school. read more | digg story

Update: For more information about Twitter, I highly recommend Caroline Middlebrook’s Guide to Twitter.

Wondering why everyone’s abuzz about the potential of Twitter? Chris Brogan offers 5 reasons why they’re not crazy. For law school study groups or merely law school friends, this appears to be an efficient new way to get quick answers from friends about a law school assignment or a reading assignment, keep in contact with old family and friends, or stay in touch for after-class socializing. What’s so great about it? » FULL STORY

Law students are professionals, but drawing the line between formal and informal can be difficult with technology such as instant messaging (IM). The problem is also present in e-mail, because the medium is inherently informal. Here is a quick list of tips to prevent from being annoying on IM. Do you do these? read more | digg story

If you are a law student using a mac, you will probably enjoy many of the useful tips at Mac Law Student. Law students with a Mac often feel like the minority. They shouldn’t. Here are a number of excellent recent articles that will make life easier for law students with a Mac.

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Check out these Mac law student articles and many other more recent Mac tips:

• LexisNexis and Westlaw Compatabilty on Mac Web Browsers
• Mac note-taking software review
• How to Speed Up Mail.app
• Tips for Cleaning-up the E-Mail Inbox and Desktop
• A Useful Mac-Only Writing Tool
• List of Essential OS X Applications for Law Students
• Mac GTD Applications
• Assignment Planner: Another Way to Manage Class Work
• Mac law student software review

Mac Law Student also provides some Mac template files specifically for law students.

Here are a few legal research tips for law students that law school may not teach you.

If you don’t know where to find a particular authority or source (e.g. the Wallstreet Journal, a particular treatise, a particular body of law, a Restatement, etc.) on WestLaw or Lexis, follow these instructions:

1. Use this resources to find the name of the Lexis or Westlaw database for a particular authority/source: Zimmerman’s Research Guide
2. For Lexis: Once you have the Lexis database (aka “library”) name, you can use the “Power Search” at the bottom of this page to do a very quick search: Lexis Search Shortcuts. (Note that you must have already logged into Lexis before doing the Power Search.) (Maybe there is a way to do this inside Lexis, but I haven’t found it.)
3. For WestLaw: Once you have found the WestLaw database, type the database code in WestLaw and search it there.

If you use the Firefox web browser (which I recommend over Internet Explorer), there are some time-saving resources available:

• Get the Cornell LII search engine for your searchbox here: All Cornel Search Plugins
• Get the “LexisNexis Lawschool” search engine for your Firefox searchbox in the list of educational search engines here, Firefox searchbox Plugins for Education, or just search for “Lexis” here, Firefox Searchbox Plugins Search
• If you have a lot of search engines in your Firfox searchbox, you may want to organize your Firefox searchbox with subfolders here: Malte’s Organize Searchbox Plugin for Firefox

If you have other tips, leave a Comment here.

UPDATE: See also Legal Research and Writing Tips for Law School and How to Improve Legal Writing in Law School.

A brave law-student-to-be (she is starting law school and motherhood about the same time) offered some useful tips about how law students can save money when buying software. Especially noteworthy are some of the software prices you can get with a student discount — for example:

• Microsoft OneNote 2007: $44.95
• Adobe Creative Suite: $389.95
• EverNote Plus: 29.95

She also notes that shipping is free.

In addition, she mentioned some good suggestions for ways potential law students can save money by taking advantage of Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAP).

Top law school rankings are provided by a number of law school ranking organizations. U.S. News is one of the most popular ones. However, » FULL STORY

Law school is a great adventure. Law school is also a challenge. New readers to Law Student may want to know what law school tips and advice are available to them here. » FULL STORY

Legal writing was difficult for me in the beginning of law school. In fact, my legal writing professor told me I started as one of the worst in the class. However, lots of practice and these four books resulted in this same professor nominating my brief for a legal writing competition at the end of my first year. In addition, these books have been invaluable resources while serving on Law Review and while interning recently for a federal district court judge.

The best legal writing resources I recommend are these:

1. The Red Book – A legal writing guide with samples of briefs, motions, research memos, and more
2. The Blue Book – The legal citation authority
3. Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage – A very useful guide to grammar, sentence structure, formating, and more
4. Getting to Maybe – Learn to think (and ultimately write) like a lawyer with this book, which teaches legal analysis of issues

» FULL STORY

Here are a few lessons I learned this year as a 3L in law school:

• For closed book exams, using law school practice exams was very, very valuable because it improved my ability to think through the issues and identified areas I needed to study more.
• When learning the law, commercial law school outlines were better than free law school outlines online because they were more reliable and accurate.
• For take-home exams, using free law school outlines that I downloaded from the internet were better than commercial law school outlines because I could do a text search using Google Desktop Search or similar software to find key concepts, sections of code, or related issues to ensure I was not missing something. » FULL STORY

Looking for more law school exam advice? Check on this nice list at CALI’s Pre-Law Blog.

Also, you may want to prepare for finals by practicing with free law school exams or law school outlines.

During finals, I’ll be taking a break from writing here. See you on the other side! Good luck on your exams!