1L - First Year Lesson Topics

Most law students do not know what professors expect on law school exams. Students wonder what will score more points. In general, law school exam answers that score the highest tend to use a specific deductive argument structure. This lesson explains deductive argument structure and how to employ it on an exam.

This lesson helps students understand where cases fit in a final exam answer and develop arguments based on cases. Students' exam arguments should improve using this lesson's techniques.

This lesson also includes video commentary from the author that expands on the material in the lesson.

Course selection plays a critical role in your success at law school. If you choose poorly, it can hurt your law school experience, your GPA, and your future career options. In this lesson, we provide you with a four-step process to help you make smart course selection choices each semester.

If you are just starting law school, or thinking about doing so soon, it can often feel like you need to learn a foreign language. Not to mention all the abbreviations, odd acronyms, and more! This lesson is designed to help you get started on mastering the brand new language that is the field of law.

This lesson will cover how to conduct legal research about the constitutions of individual states, online and in print.

This lesson explains how to research Vermont state law. Topics include cases, statutes and legislative history, administrative law, as well as legal ethics and current awareness resources. Using a hypothetical research problem, the lesson walks through efficient ways to find answers.

Riparianism is the system of water law used in most eastern states in the United States to govern property rights in water. This lesson provides a review of the basic concepts of the doctrine of riparianism for students in Water Law or Property classes. It covers both common law riparianism and regulated riparianism.

This lesson is designed to provide students with data about why their attention levels may dip during class or studying, including recent research regarding the effects of digital distractions on concentration. The lesson invites students to reflect upon the reasons they may lose focus and/or concentration while in class or while studying, and provides a robust set of strategies students can use to anticipate and control for that loss of focus, incorporating several free-writes.

This lesson explores the concepts of notice and knowledge. These are important concepts in many areas of law, e.g., contracts, property, constitutional law, criminal procedure and civil procedure.

The lesson introduces several common rule structures and tests recognition of each. The lesson challenges the student to recognize the rule of law as it appears in several cases.

This lesson will run through critical considerations to think about before stepping into the law school classroom, or the "theater of learning" for the first time! Through a series of interactive diagnostic questions and teaching pages, the lesson explores many themes of first semester, including choosing your seat, class participation and how to handle the Socratic method, pre- and post-class prep, time management, using professors' office hours, and how the basics of the court system and functions of each level of court generate the "case method" of law school teaching and learning.

Whether you are new to law school or have made it through a few semesters, there are always ways to improve your process and performance. This lesson uses your answers to help you determine the best CALI Law School Success lessons to help you meet your goals and tailors the advice depending on where you are in your law school career.

This lesson will walk you through things to consider before setting "foot" (physically or virtually!) in a law school doctrinal classroom. You'll learn about how to listen for and capture the most important information, how to maximize your note-taking efficiency by using symbols and shorthand, and the various software options available for taking notes. It is recommended by the author that this lesson be completed before Note-Taking 101: Case-Based Content, which tests your note-taking skills in practice.

This lesson will teach you what grit and growth mindset are, and why they are important for learning and mastering success, specifically as they pertain to law school.

This lesson covers First Amendment doctrine and theory pertaining to commercial speech. The lesson considers the development of commercial speech from unprotected to protected speech; the applicable constitutional tests for evaluating commercial speech, the doctrine regarding mandated disclosures in commercial contexts, and recent cases decided by the Roberts Court considering commercial speech.

This lesson, intended for incoming and current 1L law students, guides participants through the process of note-taking in law school classes with a focus on case-based information. Using a series of cross-doctrinal audio lecture examples and integrating periodic checks for understanding, students have the opportunity to develop their note-taking skills and practice categorizing the pieces of case-based information. This lesson is equally suitable for full-time, part-time, evening, or remote law students.

This lesson is designed to help you self-assess your semester performance. It is best suited for completion after you finish a full law school semester. It begins with a brief overview of self-regulated learning and metacognition. Then, the lesson provides a step-by-step process for assessing your law school semester.

Law students often hear about the importance of "doing hypos" but don't know why they are important, where to find them, how to do them, and so on. This lesson will cover the what, why, when, where, and how of hypos so law students can conquer the material they are learning and be prepared for exams.

This lesson addresses freedom of speech issues for public school employees at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels.

A basic introduction (or refresher!) about sources of law, court structure, and precedent.

Law school creates a competitive environment with significantly more work than most undergraduate programs. The new expectations and environment increases anxiety and stress for many students. This lesson introduces basic skills to help students practice mindfulness and stay in the present despite the numerous stressors.

This lesson explores one of the fundamental lawyering skills, which is self assessment. This lesson looks at how to learn from success and failures. Primarily, it focuses on what to do after a quiz, midterm, or final exam, and how to continue learning from those assessments.

This lesson gives best practices on whether and how to form a law school study group.

In law school, students are expected to read multiple cases to identify rules that will be applied on exams. Using non-law sources, students will learn how to extract individual rules from multiple articles to create one synthesized rule that can be used to solve new problems.