My Approach to 0L Prep

My job is dead during the summer months. Really dead. So dead that half of today was spent playing Trivial Pursuit with my coworkers. Three-to-four days a week, I can do pretty much whatever I want so long as I'm there from 9:30-5:30 and dressed in my employer's (very lax) definition of business casual. The other one-to-two days, I can do anything I want provided that I can look like I'm being productive if the Big Boss happens to walk by. (I.e., if it's on my crappy work computer, I can do it. If it involves a book or a my personal laptop, I can't.) It makes sense, then, to devote some of that time to 0L prep.


The general internet consensus on 0L prep seems to fall into two categories. Category A says to do nothing, and if you must do something, read Getting To Maybe and 1L of a Ride. Category B says read a ton of supplements, listen to every Sum & Substance, and Freak The Hell Out.

Category B isn't me. I may be Freaking The Hell Out, but I also know myself well enough to know that trying to learn anything substantive before I start law school is a terrible idea. Without the structure of a class, a syllabus, and the desire to take notes, I'll skim everything and walk into law school feeling overconfident. The thing is, Category A isn't me either.

Don't get me wrong, I've already read 1L of a Ride and am reading Getting to Maybe. But law school is something that I'm excited and nervous about, and there's only so many hours I can waste at work playing Angry Birds. (Four out of every eight seems to be my limit.)

My plan is, then, to create something of a hybrid of the categories. I am listening to Sum & Substance, but I'm making an active effort not to try to absorb anything substantive from it. It's passive listening, something to play in the background during my hours of Angry Birds. I'm not trying to learn the law, merely absorb the language. This suggestion came from a friend of mine, a rising 3L in the top 15% of her class. We having very different learning styles, she and I, an I take most of her advice with a grain of salt, but hey. It makes me feel like I'm doing something.

I'm also reading beyond Getting to Maybe. I'm not, however, reading supplements or casebooks. Instead, I'm reading case law. I was a Poli Sci major with a focus on political theory/philosophy, but I also took a ton of undergrad law classes. I learned to like reading cases. (If I didn't, I probably wouldn't be going to law school.)  I'm not focusing on or seeking out those cases that are a major part of the 1L canon. I haven't touched Palsgraf, Pennoyer, Erie, or even re-read Marbury. I might, at some point, but for now I'm reading cases that touch on areas that interest me, as I've done for the past several years. (Nothing silences a room of pre-law Poli Sci majors debating what this court or that court said like the question "have you read the opinion?")

My goal isn't to learn the law. My goal is to get myself back in the habit of reading long, dense passages. My goal is to get used to reading ten pages, leaning back, and thinking "wow, I'm not sure what any of that means."  My goal is to keep my brain active while I sit in my office getting paid to do almost nothing. My goal is to improve my reading comprehension and stamina.

My rising-3L-friend also suggested that I take some time to do things that have nothing to do with law school. Like everyone else, she reminded me that law school is a marathon and my biggest enemy will be burnout. The danger of 0L prep is, obviously, exhausting my brain before I even arrive. I think there's a lot of merit to this, too. I'm not spending all my time reading cases. I'm playing Angry Birds. I'm playing on Facebook. I'm listening to music, cleaning my apartment, rewatching Mad Men along with a friend who's watching for the first time. I'm knitting. I plan to leave my job several weeks before I move to do things like get new glasses, go to the dentist, and hang out drinking beer with friends until all hours of the morning. At some point, Damages and Weeds will come back. I'll rewatch Parks & Recreation and Sports Night because I think laughter is a Very Good Thing. (Also, another friend who's a recent law school grad suggested that I not get invested in a new TV show until after law school. I think this is, perhaps, the most solid advice I've received, full stop.)

The final step of my 0L prep approach is the one that, I suspect, I'll find most difficult. I also think it's likely the most important. I've had serious sleep problems for all of my 30 years. To be at work by 9:30, I have to be up by 8:30(ish) Monday-Friday. I'm a night person, and tend to stay up way too late on Friday nights and sleep in way too late on the weekends. My alarm is set to go off at 8:30 every day now, including weekends. I'm determined to start paying attention to my sleep hygiene, as I've heard it called. I got through undergrad without ever taking a class that started before 11 AM (and I only took a couple of those). Looking over the 1L schedule for my law school over the past few years, I'll likely end up in 9 AM classes several days a week. Better to get used to that now than when it actually counts.

Oh, and then there's the part where I obsessively pull up the floorplan for my new apartment. I don't think that's going to help me at all, but it makes me happy.