Law School Success

  • This Subject Area Index lists all currently published CALI lessons covering Law School Success.
  • The Law School Success Outline allows you to search for terms of art that correspond to topics you are studying to find suggestions for related CALI Lessons.
  • For related resources, see CALI's Bar Success and Planning topic.
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Analysis 1: Thinking Like a Lawyer

This lesson explores one of the fundamental lawyering skills, which is to think like a lawyer, or analyze. Students will go through basic analysis exercises, so they can master this technique prior to writing exams.

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

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Study Scheduling for the Evening, Weekend, or Part-Time J.D. Student

This lesson is designed to help part-time, evening, weekend, or flex J.D. law students maximize their limited study time as they navigate multiple obligations, balancing law school with full-time work, care, or other responsibilities. The lesson encourages self-reflection on when and how the student learns best, and walks them through the basics of time-blocking and time management, encouraging frequent reflection and adjustments to schedules as necessary. The lesson can be completed or revisited at any time during law school, and might best be completed by students before/upon entering the first semester of law school.

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Words Matter

You may have heard that lawyers are precise. It’s true. In law school, you will spend a lot of time discussing the meaning of a singular word or placement of a comma.

It is also true that sometimes there is more than one way to say something, or multiple phrases may mean essentially the same thing. It can be tricky to hear both that every punctuation mark and word matters, and that you must be nimble enough to recognize when two sources are talking about the same concept in different terms. This lesson is designed to show you some examples both of precision, and of when two things essentially mean the same thing.

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Metacognition

This lesson focuses upon the concept of metacognition and teaches you how to enhance your understanding about how you learn to better improve your study, organizational, test-taking and self-assessment skills with the goal of improving your performance in law school.

The lesson should help you better understand your individual learning process and show you how to use this information to develop study and test-taking skills needed for success in law school.

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Don't Compartmentalize! Transfer is the Key to Law School Success

One of the best ways to learn and remember something is to connect it to something that you already know. Once you have made that connection, it becomes easier to use the new information, because you are connecting it to something that you already understand. Making these connections is called transfer. You can transfer vertically (i.e. from one topic in criminal law to another, or from Contracts 1 to Contracts 2), or you can transfer horizontally from course to course (i.e. from contracts to criminal law).

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Law School Resources

Law school will consume your life during the three or four years that you are enrolled. But that doesn’t mean that life stops. Bills still have to be paid; people still get sick; the rest of the world keeps rolling on.

There will likely be a time during your legal education when you need help with something. The good news is that there are plenty of people available to help. You are not alone. Whatever you are going through, someone else has gone through too. It’s important to reach out for help, so you can work through your problems, without hurting your academic performance.

This lesson will address what to do if you face a variety of academic and life issues. It will also get you to begin thinking about post-graduation planning.

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Managing Pandemic Stress in Law School: Discussions in Law School Success

In this podcast, four Academic Support professionals provide strategies for dealing with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic while in law school. The pandemic introduced even greater uncertainty into an already stressful environment. This podcast provides tools to succeed at law school during these unprecedented times.                     

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