First Year, No Fear: Law School Made Easy

By C.D. Landreth

First Year, No Fear is the indispensable guide for the aspiring law student. Written by a recent graduate who thrived in the trenches, this book offers a clear-eyed view of law school's challenges and equips you with the tools not just to survive, but to excel. 

Inside you'll find: 

• Actionable steps to prepare for your first semester, including outlining techniques and effective case briefing. 
• Authentic accounts of the Socratic Lecture and effective approaches to nail the dreaded cold call. 
• Proven study strategies to ace your law school exams, maximize your academic performance, and prepare for the Bar Exam. 
• Real-world examples of course outlines, case briefs, and sample exam questions to demystify the law school experience. 

Whether you're just beginning your law school journey or are simply seeking to optimize your performance, First Year, No Fear is your essential companion for early success. This is your chance to conquer law school with confidence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matt McEachern
• Release date: Apr 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224928132

C.D. Landreth

C.D. Landreth is a graduate of Denver University's Sturm College of law and now serves as an in-house commercial attorney for a major technology company.

Book preview

First Year, No Fear

Law School Made Easy

C.D. Landreth

Copyright © 2024 byAnother Page, LLC.

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

1st edition 2024

For Jenny,

who went to sea in a sieve with me;

hopefully we returned with some

wisdom from the journey.

Contents

Title Page

PREFACE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

APPENDIX

PREFACE

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

– Nelson Mandela

Embarking on the journey through law school is a decision that often comes with trepidation. As a future or current law student, you are probably excited but maybe a little nervous as well. You’ve taken a decisive step, driven by your aspiration to become an attorney, or at least to attain a Juris Doctor degree. However, it’s crucial to acknowledge the undeniable truths of law school: it is intense, it can be difficult, and it will test your abilities in ways you may not currently realize.

Consider the analogy of a young child taking on a new household chore – weeding the garden. Without the framework of knowledge and experience that adults possess, this simple task can seem insurmountable to a child. Which plants in the garden are weeds and which are not? What does it mean to weed? How do I get rid of the weeds? Where do I put them? Do I need gloves? Are there spiders or other things that can bite or scratch me? A child in this situation needs both instruction and context.

Approaching law school as a young adult is a lot like this. Without the appropriate context and parameters, law school might seem insurmountable. There are many unanswered questions that obscure the experience before you get started. However, like a simple household chore, law school is mostly about putting in the time and doing the tedious work until the job is done. Don’t get me wrong, it can also be complicated and dense, but it is more about commitment and discipline than it is about being extremely talented.

Law school is a labyrinth of statutes, cases, treatises, and doctrines that demand not only your time, but also a commitment to deciphering complex ideas that you haven’t thought much about before. You will be asked not only to absorb vast amounts of information but to develop an analytical mindset where you will meticulously scrutinize every written or spoken word for nuance and implication. You will be required to speak publicly and voice your opinion about ideas you have little experience with. Your opinions will then be subject to interrogation by professors with vastly more knowledge and skill than you.

Navigating law school can often feel overwhelming for incoming students. If this is you, you should take solace in the fact that you are not alone. The upcoming challenges are ones that all of the best attorneys, judges, and other legal minds have also faced. Those challenges are the stepping stones to your ultimate goal just as they were to the great legal minds that have come before you.

Brace yourself. Law school and the legal profession can be a tough road. However, with the right guidance and context you can turn the inevitable challenges ahead into opportunities for growth.

Purpose of This Book

Ultimately, the purpose of this book is to simplify your initial semesters of law school by offering insights into what the experience will demand of you and what it will offer in return. The law student who reads this book should find the early part of law school similar to a household chore like pulling weeds in the garden or taking out the trash. In many ways, law school is just a series of tasks that simply require time and effort.

Instead of using the summer before law school to relax or focus on my mental and physical well-being, I wasted precious time reading other books sometimes recommended to prospective students. However, none of the books I read prior to law school were actually worth the time investment. Many of them were over four hundred dense and difficult pages long. For example, because I was enrolled in a property law course during my first semester, I actually attempted to read a full casebook and understand all of the legal principles of property law before the semester started. This was a huge waste of time.

If I could turn back time and choose just one book to read during the summer before law school, it would undeniably be this one. Implementing even a fraction of the advice contained in this book could have saved me hundreds of hours of inefficient time-wasting during my journey. Not only would I have managed my time more effectively, but I would have been better prepared for the challenges that came after law school – from preparing for the Bar Exam to finding a job as an attorney.

The purpose of this book is to be your early law school guide – offering concise, relevant, and practical information to demystify the experience in less than a hundred pages. By lifting the veil early in the process, I aim to make your experience of law school far more efficient and, consequently, more enjoyable and rewarding than mine was. If you avoid the time-wasting pitfalls that I encountered, you will have ample time for family, self-care, or, if you’re ambitious, gaining an edge over your classmates in the competitive grading curve.

What won’t this book do? It will not teach you how to think like a lawyer – that’s what law school is for. This book will not waste your time covering anything other than the main topics that will impact the academic process of the first few semesters of law school. Therefore, it will not delve into topics like choosing a school, the admissions process, or paying tuition. This book assumes that you have already chosen to go to law school and that you want to hit the ground running academically once your first semester begins. 

In this book, I will share all of the most valuable insights that I wish I knew before my law school experience. These insights will save you countless hours of confusion and wasted time. By the end of this book, you will understand all of the fundamental aspects of the early part of law school – from classroom dynamics and the Socratic lecture to reading legal cases, preparing for law school exams, and keeping the Bar Exam in sight even early on in the process.

About Me

My journey to law school unfolded nearly a decade after completing my undergraduate degree. During the interim, I pursued a career that involved various business management and strategy roles at a major data and technology company. Balancing a full-time position in product strategy, I attended law school part-time on weekends and evenings.

After graduating in the top 20% of my class and successfully passing the Bar Exam in 2022, I transitioned onto the legal team at the same company and assumed the role of in-house counsel.  My primary professional focus now lies in corporate transactional work, specifically drafting and negotiating complex commercial agreements. 

Early in law school, I thoroughly read every case that was assigned by the professors…  twice. I thought this would better prepare me for the dreaded cold calls – when professors randomly, and often relentlessly, interrogate students about the readings. Hindsight has since revealed that reading cases multiple times, along with many other brute force methods that I employed during law school, wasted a copious amount of precious time.

Before law school, if I had stumbled upon a book like the one you’re about to read, my experience would have been far more enriching. Rather than being stressed and confused much of the time, I would have been equipped with a better framework for how to use my time judiciously. Moreover, the insights and anecdotes provided in this book would have alleviated much of the stress caused by the novelty of the first few semesters of law school.

You may think that I didn’t enjoy law school very much, but I actually did. Looking back, I see how the journey could have been much smoother, but that doesn’t diminish the profound transformation that I underwent. I enjoyed law school immensely. It honed a lot of my skills, turning me into a sharper reader and a more critical thinker. It introduced me to some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. I made a few good friends and attained many personal goals. Yet, as with many experiences in life, I have learned lessons and discovered paths that I could have taken to extract even more value from the law school journey. As I share the insights and lessons derived from my time in law school, my sincere hope is that they illuminate your path and make your journey even more rewarding than mine.

Let’s get started.

CHAPTER ONE

A few critical things to know about law school.

It’s not about money or connections – It’s the willingness to outwork and outlearn everyone.

– Mark Cuban

If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

– Stephen King

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

– Groucho Marx

Law school is often seen by outsiders as an intimidating and daunting place; a place where students are expected to read, write, and argue about some of the