1L of a Ride: A Well-Traveled Professor's Roadmap to Success in the First Year of Law School (5th ed.)
by Andrew J. McClurg · West Academic Publishing
First-person guide to the whole first year: the 1L curriculum, the case and Socratic methods, class participation, briefing and note-taking, outlining, exam strategy, legal writing, and well-being. Includes sample briefs, outlines, and exam answers. Fifth edition, 2025.
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Lawdibles: CALI Podcasts (Law School Success episodes)
Free podcast from CALI, the nonprofit law-school consortium. Short episodes by law professors and academic support faculty cover briefing cases, outlining as synthesis, IRAC, essay exam technique, law school myths, falling behind, and first-generation student experiences.
Getting to Maybe: How to Excel on Law School Exams (2nd ed.)
Two law professors explain why law exams reward argument over memorized rules, showing how to spot issues, argue rule and fact ambiguity on both sides, prepare outlines, draft answers under time pressure, and handle multiple-choice questions. Second edition, 2023.
Writing Law Examinations
Seven-page guide written by a Yale Law School professor for his own students on answering issue-spotting exams: organizing the answer, analyzing facts against rules, arguing both sides, and why exam writing uses the same skills as briefs and memos.
How to Read a Legal Opinion: A Guide for New Law Students
The standard free primer on the very first skill of law school, reading cases. Sixteen-page essay from the Green Bag (2007) walking a first-year student through a judicial opinion: caption, citation, author, facts, procedural posture, holding and reasoning, concurrences and dissents, plus common terms such as affirm, reverse, and remand.