How to Get in (and Stay In) TheTop 25% of Your Law School Class

Being a lawyer means making $100,000+ per year, right? Not exactly. In fact, the majority of lawyers make somewhere between $40,000 and $70,000. Yes, there are larger firms that pay first year associates into the 6 figures, but you won't be grabbing that job anytime soon unless you're part of the elite of your law school class. Even then, it's not guaranteed. The tips I'm about to provide are based upon my success and the success of at least 2 others I know in my law school class who obtained top 25% status after the first year and have maintained said status.

Getting into the Top 25% of your class (and staying in)

(1) Prepare for class. In your first year, you can't afford to pick and choose what you read for class. If your professor assigns you 50, 100 or 150 pages for a week, you should budget time to read the entire assignment. Thinking that's no problem? I was too, until I realized that being able to plow through a 400 page novel in a day was not comparable to reading legal jargon and cases written in 1930. It's a slow learning process, but prepping for class is half the battle.

(2) Volunteer in class. Many professors still use the Socratic Method (calling randomly upon people throughout class to instill fear and weed out the less serious students). But even for those who don't, volunteering to speak in class will help you to stay involved and in-tune to the discussion. You're paying to go to class, so you should get the most out of it that you can, even if you end up with a lousy professor. Yes, with laptops and wireless internet, browsing and chatting with friends is tempting. I'm not saying I never did it, but the classes in which I focused on the lecture and forced myself to participate were by far the ones in which I received my highest grades.

(3) Don't bother with study groups. I tried to join one my first semester but we had such different styles and were so much more eagar to discuss the pitfalls of being a 1L that we didn't accomplish much. My friends who have been involved in them have pretty much found them worthless as well. The studying and prepping that you can do on your own 2 hours will be much more useful than checking in with someone else and having to speed up or slow down to stay even with their learning curve. More often, these turn into gossip groups. Do not attempt to piece together an outline using someone else's help, either. Later, you'll just look at it and wonder what you meant by most of the writing.

(4) Outline throughout the semester. It's tempting to just do the work and worry about finals at the end of the semester. This is why I actually prefer courses with midterms because they force you to start organizing your notes early. That's essentially what an outline is: an organized document of your notes from readings and class lecture. Some professors might even let you use yours during the final so it is to your advantage to make a great one. I found it most helpful to review my notes and put them into a cohesive outline at a minimum of once a month, preferably every other week. The more often you do it, the less pages of notes you'll have to work with and the more familiar you'll be with the lecture on those topics.

(5) Skip MOST commercial outlines. Your notes from your text and the professor's lecture are the best and most useful for studying. Most commercial outlines are just another ploy to get you to take out additional loans to buy them at $30+ per book. But, if you must have one, check out the Examples&Explanations series. I've found these the most helpful because they provide you with snippets of sample essays and answers. After all, most law school exams are not short answer, T/F or multiple choice. You might find a few, but most are issue spotting long essays. E&E books helps you to take everything you've learned and apply it to factual scenarios, just like you'll be asked to do in an exam.

The above tips have worked to get me into the top 20% of my class and helped me to stay in that position. As I said in the beginning, being in that top percentage is quite important to the large and more c ompetitive firms. This is not to discount the importance of networking, legal experience, or participating in other activities while in law school. All those will help immensely as well, but they are each essays in and of themselves. And, of course, if you prefer to go solo, public interest, or to a smaller firm, you may not need to be in that top percentage. But still, if you're going to almost bankrupt yourself and give away a good few years to law school, why not do the absolute best that you can?