The Law School Journey
Law school itself runs on a nearly universal 1L curriculum taught through the case method, a grading curve that puts real weight on a single final exam, and a set of extracurricular tracks — law review, moot court, clinics, clerkships, and OCI — that shape your career as much as your grades do. The 15 guides are organized into 4 categories: 1L academics, 2L & 3L, Career, 1L subject guides.
| Category | Guides |
|---|---|
| 1L academics | 3 |
| 2L & 3L | 3 |
| Career | 2 |
| 1L subject guides | 7 |
1L academics
1L academics
3 in-depth guidesSurviving 1L: What First-Year Law School Actually Looks Like
What the first year of law school actually consists of — the core courses, the Socratic method, and how the workload differs from undergraduate study.
Read the complete guide →02How to Brief a Case and Use IRAC: The Basic Skills of Law School
How to brief a judicial opinion for class discussion, and how the IRAC structure (Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion) organizes legal analysis on exams.
Read the complete guide →03Law School Exams and Grading: The Curve, Blind Grading, and Exam Format
How law school exams are typically formatted and graded, including the mandatory curve most schools use and anonymous (blind) grading.
Read the complete guide →2L & 3L
2L & 3L
3 in-depth guidesLaw Review and Journals: How Write-On Competitions Work
What law review and secondary journals actually are, how the write-on competition process typically works, and what membership involves.
Read the complete guide →02Moot Court vs. Mock Trial: Which One to Try Out For Based on Your Career Path
Moot court trains appellate briefs and oral argument; mock trial trains witness exams and objections. Compare time cost, tryouts and which fits appellate, litigation, prosecution or transactional goals.
Read the complete guide →03Law School Clinics, Externships, and Judicial Clerkships: Real Practice Before You Graduate
How law school clinics and externships work, and how the federal judicial clerkship hiring process through OSCAR operates.
Read the complete guide →Career
Career
2 in-depth guidesOCI and the Law School 2L Legal Job Search: How On-Campus Interviewing Works
OCI (on-campus interviewing) is one piece of the law school legal job search, alongside public interest, government, and smaller-firm hiring paths.
Read the complete guide →02The Transition From Law School to the Bar Exam: Building the Handoff Before You Graduate
The transition from law school to the bar exam works best when you carry doctrine, writing feedback, and administrative progress forward, instead of starting bar prep from zero.
Read the complete guide →1L subject guides
1L subject guides
7 in-depth guides1L Civil Procedure Survival Guide: What Actually Trips Students Up
Why Civil Procedure feels abstract early in the semester, the specific traps in personal jurisdiction and pleading standards, and how to study the course for the exam it actually gives.
Read the complete guide →021L Contracts Survival Guide: Formation, Defenses, and the UCC Trap
Why Contracts rewards careful issue-spotting over broad rule knowledge, the common-law-versus-UCC distinction students miss early, and how to approach the course's fact-heavy exams.
Read the complete guide →031L Torts Survival Guide: Duty, Breach, and the Multi-Party Fact Pattern
Why Torts exams reward organized, multi-party issue-spotting over rule memorization, and how negligence's element structure becomes the course's central skill.
Read the complete guide →041L Property Survival Guide: Estates, Recording, and the Historical Vocabulary Problem
Why Property's archaic vocabulary slows students down early, and how to approach future interests, recording acts, and landlord-tenant law without losing time to terminology alone.
Read the complete guide →051L Criminal Law Survival Guide: Mens Rea, Merger, and the Model Penal Code Trap
Why matching the required mens rea to each element is Criminal Law's central skill, and why mixing common-law and Model Penal Code terminology is the course's most common avoidable error.
Read the complete guide →061L Constitutional Law Survival Guide: Levels of Scrutiny and the Threshold Questions
Why picking the correct level of scrutiny is Constitutional Law's central skill, and how to organize the course's recurring threshold questions before reaching the merits.
Read the complete guide →071L Legal Research and Writing Survival Guide: The Skill Course That Isn't Graded Like the Others
Why Legal Research and Writing is graded differently from doctrinal 1L courses, and how to treat its ongoing feedback as a direct investment in your bar-exam writing.
Read the complete guide →