A Law School Slacker's Guide to Cramming

Now that we are back from Thanksgiving and facing finals, it may dawn on us law school slackers just how far behind we are in studying. For all of you 1Ls, don't despair! You might fear that it is impossible to catch up, but that's not necessarily true.

Having found myself in this position before, I wanted to share tips on how to catch up. The resulting grades might not put you in the running for a Supreme Court clerkship, but they might help you to learn the material that you need to know for exams quickly. These strategies have helped me, but feel free to chime in with your own ideas.

Here it goes:

1. Base your outline on another person's outline. Don't break the honor code, but use their outline to create your attack outline for the test. In my experience, it doesn't help to try to create my own full outline from scratch if I am far behind.


2. Buy commercial supplements. I like to use one "case summary" supplement that summarizes the cases you need to know and one narrative-style treatise to explain how all of the cases fit together.


3. Use your syllabus or table of contents to organize and distill the morass of information into manageable quantities of law.


4. Keep up hope! Especially as 1Ls, we sometimes feel despondent if we haven't briefed every case and finished outlines before Thanksgiving. Cheer up! Grades can be arbitrary, but no matter how far behind you think you are, you can still take action to put yourself in a better position.

Best of Luck!