Welcome Admitted Students!

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The Law Library would like to welcome everyone attending the March Admitted Student Open House today! We hope that you will stop by the Law Library if you take a tour. Many prospective students are nervous about the law school experience. The following is a selective reading list of books that offer an introduction to the law school experience.

  • 1L of a Ride: A Well-Traveled Professor’s Roadmap to Success in the First Year of Law School
    • Available to UC students via the West Academic subscription and Law Stacks  KF287 .M38 2017
    • 1L of a Ride provides a candid, comprehensive roadmap to both academic and emotional success in law school’s crucial first year. Told in an accessible first-person voice, covered topics in the revised and updated third edition include pre-planning, top student fears, first-year curriculum, the Socratic and case methods of teaching, effective class participation, top habits of successful students, essential study techniques, legal research and writing, exam strategies, maintaining well-being, and much more. Combines anecdotes, comments from law students, empirical research, and authentic samples of signature documents from the 1L experience, including exam questions, Socratic dialogue, and student case-briefs, class notes, and course outlines. The author is an award-winning professor who has taught at six different law schools.
  • 1000 Days to the Bar, but the Practice of Law Begins Now
    • Law Stacks KF272 .T66 2003
    • This book that breaks law school learning strategies into understandable, logical and practical steps that maximize the effect of students’ study efforts, and explicitly ties those learning strategies to the strategies practicing lawyers use to understand, analyze and apply legal concepts in the real life representation of their clients.
  • Acing Your First Year of Law School: The Ten Steps to Success You Won’t Learn in Class
    • Law Stacks KF283 .N69 1999
    • Here is a manual that teaches you these ten skills so you can start learning your first day and ace your first year of law school.
  • Asked and Answered – Your Guide to Law School Success, Vol. 2, Advice for Second-Year Law Students
    • Available to UC students via the West Academic subscription
    • This text provides practical responses to the most commonly asked questions that second-year students have regarding career issues, such as where to find the right job this summer, building a great resume, writing a compelling cover letter, networking advice, and much more. Answers are provided by successful attorneys, law school professors, and career service professionals.
  • Bridging the Gap Between College and Law School
    • Law Stacks KF289 .S77 2014
    • This popular book helps students make the transition from their undergraduate experience to law school learning. Unlike other ”introduction to law school” texts, Bridging the Gap offers a different approach because it: explains the ”why” of law, providing students with the context necessary to understand why law school is taught in a certain manner; explains the ”how” of the law, setting out a step-by-step process that will help students adapt to the law school setting; explains the ”what” of the law, giving students the opportunity to practice the problem-solving process by providing numerous exercises in a variety of subject matter areas. Rather than giving only general advice, or black letter law and some practice problems for a specific subject, Bridging the Gap provides the context, the process, and the problems.
  • Coming to Law School: How to Prepare Yourself for the Next Three Years
    • Available to UC students via the Lexis OverDrive subscription
    • This book demystifies law school and the process of studying the law. The book shows how study skills such as case briefing, taking notes in class, and preparing exam outlines are interrelated and how an incoming student can practice them before coming to law school, making the transition from prospective to actual law student easier and as painless as possible. The book also contains information about many practical issues, including the law school process, how to do well in a summer job, and taking the bar exam.
  • Critical Reading for Success in Law School and Beyond
    • Available to UC students via the West Academic subscription
    • Critical Reading for Success in Law School and Beyond presents critical reading strategies in a systematic sequence so that students can become effective readers who are successful in both law school and in law practice. This reading system was developed by identifying the characteristics of expert readers at different stages of the reading process and then creating a curriculum to teach these skills. It contains essential ingredients for developing skills in reading comprehension as well as legal analysis, case evaluation, and case synthesis. Critical Reading starts with chapters on reading as an advocate and with focus and then introduces students to case structure as well as civil and criminal procedure. Students are then introduced to specific comprehension techniques such as case context, reading for an overview, reading facts, and strategies for understanding unclear text. Critical Reading then addresses strategies for making inferences, evaluating cases, and synthesizing cases.
  • Expert Learning for Law Students
    • Available to UC students via the Lexis OverDrive subscription and Law Stacks KF283 .S354 2018
    • The third edition of Expert Learning for Law Students is a reorganization and rethinking of this highly-regarded law school success text. It retains the core insights and lessons from prior editions while updating the materials to reflect recent insights such as mindset theory, attribution theory, chunking for use, and interleaving learning. The text includes exercises and step-by-step guides to engage readers in the process of becoming expert learners, including specific strategies for succeeding in law school.
  • Get a Running Start: Your Comprehensive Guide to the First Year Curriculum
    • Available to UC students via the West Academic subscription
    • This book offers a global overview of the first-year curriculum in a single volume. In short lessons, Get a Running Start covers all the major concepts taught in each of the courses most commonly offered in the first year of law school: criminal law, torts, civil procedure, constitutional law, property, and contracts. By reading through all the lessons for a course, first-year students will get a complete overview of each course early in the semester. As the semester goes forward, students can accelerate their learning and comprehension by reviewing individual lessons when preparing for class. As the semester comes to a close, the lessons in this book provide an invaluable framework for outlining and exam preparation. Among the many features of this book readers will find useful and attractive are: An introductory chapter offering advice on how to structure a successful preparation and study process starting with the summer before law school and running straight through exams. Insider advice from successful law students and recent graduates on class preparation, course selection, career development, and managing the stress of law school.
  • An Introduction to Law, Law Study, and the Lawyer’s Role
    • Law Stacks KF272 .M64 2010
    • This text looks at the subject of law, the study of law, and the practice of law.
  • The Language of Law School
    • Law Stacks KF279 .M47 2007
    • This text covers “learning to think like a lawyer.” This process, which subtly induces students to think and talk in radically new and different ways about conflicts, is largely accomplished in first-year law school classes where professors inculcate new attitudes toward spoken and written language. Elizabeth Mertz’s book is the first study to truly delve into that language to reveal the complexities of how this process takes place. She concludes that the transformation law students undergo is as much a shift in how they approach language-how they talk and read and write-as in how they “think.”
  • Law School Materials for Success
    • CALI E-book
    • To meet the demands of law school, it is often helpful to have the big picture before you begin – a sense of what it is you are trying to do as you prepare for classes, participate in those classes, review and prepare for exams, take exams, and then begin the cycle once again. Law School Materials for Success is designed to give you the essentials of that process.
  • Law School Success in a Nutshell
    • Available to UC students via the West Academic subscription and Law Stacks KF283 .B871 2017
    • This short book answers questions students have as they begin their studies. What is a tort? Hornbook? Should I join a study group? It also explains and gives examples of the best methods for studying and for taking exams. It provides questions and model answers from actual law school exams. The Nutshell also provides information about the types of legal practice that are available to you when you graduate. And it describes the opportunities that will be available to you during your second and third years of law school, such as law journals, law clinics, internships, joint degree programs, and study abroad.
  • Law School Survival Manual
    • Law Stacks KF283 .R37 2010
    • In the Law School Survival Manual, Nancy Rapoport and Jeff Van Niel serve as the friendly voice of experience whose wit and wisdom will guide you through law school from the application process to orientation, and from your first year to graduation – including summer jobs, clerkships, and the bar exam. This concise handbook focuses on all aspects of law school that are mystifying or tricky or both.
  • Law School Without Fear: Strategies for Success
    • Available to UC students via the West Academic subscription and Law Stacks KF240 .S52 2009
    • This concise, plain-spoken book is an indispensable guide for beginning law students. Field-tested by students all over the country for more than a dozen years for its practicality and its psychological realism, it has proved an invaluable introduction to cutting through the fog of case analysis; minimizing the bewilderment of the Socratic method; studying law; writing for law school; preparing for exams and exam writing; managing precious time; and coping with the emotional stress of law study.
  • One L of a Year
    • Available to UC students via the Lexis OverDrive subscription
    • The purpose of “One L of a Year” is to focus on the reading, studying and testing strategies used by the most successful law students. This book is more than advice—it is a learning guide based upon empirical research and statistical correlations between law student learning and their law school GPAs.Most importantly, this book attempts to show you what high-ranking law students have done to achieve success during their first year. It’s one thing to read about how to take a law school essay exam—it’s quite another thing to see examples of student essays, outlines, legal memoranda, and multiple choice questions.
  • Reading Like a Lawyer
    • Law Stacks KF283 .M398 2005
    • The ability to read law well is a critical, indispensable skill that can make or break the academic career of any aspiring lawyer. Reading law well is a skill that can be acquired through knowledge and practice. Using seven specific reading strategies, reinforced with hands-on exercises at the end of each chapter, this book shows you how you can read law like expert law students and expert lawyers do.
  • Starting off Right in Law School
    • Available to UC students via the Lexis OverDrive subscription
    • Law school is different. Incoming students, confronted with an entirely new vocabulary and unfamiliar with the discipline’s unique and demanding educational methods, are often disoriented. This book is designed to give these students a head start, both by introducing them to the fundamentals of the legal process and by helping them acquire the study skills necessary for success. Starting Off Right in Law School introduces new law students to the practice and study of law by following a lawsuit from its inception through the appeals process, illustrating what lawyers actually do, how they prepare, how they interact with clients and in courtrooms, how a lawsuit proceeds, and how students can effectively read and analyze cases, outline, and apply what they have learned on the exams.
  • Strategies for Legal Case Reading and Vocabulary Development
    • Law Stacks KF279 .M47 2007
    • Many law students feel that they are learning a new language during their first year of law school. For those students who are not native English speakers this process can be even more overwhelming. Strategies for Legal Case Reading and Vocabulary Development was written for just these students. The goal of the text is to help students develop the case reading and vocabulary strategies they will need to compete and succeed in an American law school.
  • Strategies & Tactics for the First Year Law Student (Maximize Your Grades)
    • Law Stacks KF283 .W35 2010
    • Strategies and Tactics for the First Year Law Student gives you a detailed, step-by-step program for surviving the first year of law school. It covers Note-taking–sharpening your note-taking skills will maximize your study time and improve your grades. Your law professor’s personality–understanding it can be to your advantage. Study traps–what are they and how to avoid them. Memory aids–how classic memory systems work and when you should (and shouldn’t) use them. The pressures of law school–effective techniques for handling the pressure from classmates, professors, and reading assignments. Taking exams–nine steps to writing exceptional exam answers. The Internet–useful search engines and websites.
  • What the L?
    • Law Stacks KF283 .M388 2010
    • Three recent graduates offer a completely candid student perspective on every aspect of law school, from classmates to bar review, and outlines to studying abroad.
  • Your Brain and Law School
    • Available to UC students via the Lexis OverDrive subscription
    • Based on the latest research, this entertaining, practical guide offers law students a formula for success in school, on the bar exam, and as a practicing attorney. Mastering the law, either as a law student or in practice, becomes much easier if one has a working knowledge of the brain’s basic habits. Before you can learn to think like a lawyer, you have to have some idea about how the brain thinks. The first part of this book translates the technical research, explaining learning strategies that work for the brain in law school specifically, and calling out other tactics that are useless (though often popular lures for the misinformed). This book is unique in explaining the science behind the advice and will save you from pursuing tempting shortcuts that will take you in the wrong direction. The second part explores the brain’s decision-making processes and cognitive biases. These biases affect the ability to persuade, a necessary skill of the successful lawyer. The book talks about the art and science of framing, the seductive lure of the confirmation and egocentric biases, and the egocentricity of the availability bias. This book uses easily recognizable examples from both law and life to illustrate the potential of these biases to draw humans to mistaken judgments.
  • A Weekly Guide to Being a Model Law Student
    • Available to UC students via the West Academic subscription
    • This book gives law students weekly checklists explaining the skills necessary to successfully navigate their first year of law school. Each chapter provides a checklist of things to do that week, such as briefing cases, going over notes, outlining classes, or doing practice questions. When a new concept is introduced, this book clearly explains the concept and its purpose and provides examples. It also includes a bank of over 100 short, medium, and long practice questions in six first year subjects.
  • The Zen of Law School Success
    • Available to UC students via the Lexis OverDrive subscription
    • Like the Zen path to enlightenment, law school success is about balance (between studying and other aspects of life, as well as balancing your study time between subjects, outlining, etc.), knowing your universe (knowing not only the subject matter tested, but knowing how the questions are constructed, knowing what to look for, etc.), knowing yourself (what type of essay writer you are, what type of learner you are, what type of exam taker you are, etc.), and staying focused on your path (when to study, what to do when you are stressed out, what to do when you don¿t know a subject very well, etc.). In addition to offering a comprehensive approach to succeeding in law school, the book also offers practical advice for doing well during the classroom Socratic method, navigating the law school environment, managing law school stress, and getting a job after graduation. Moreover, the Zen of Law School Success focuses on doing well on final exams, including specific strategies and tips for both essay and multiple choice exams. The book includes many exercises and model answers that will benefit any law student.

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