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Perhaps not surprisingly, newer law students tend to devote more time to reading for class than their more seasoned law school colleagues. In 2018, full-time 1L students read for 21.7 hours per week while full-time 3L students read for approximately 15.1 hours.
On average, first-year law students study around 30-40 hours per week for class. Law school professors may assign 30-60 pages of reading per class. Many people argue that you should study 40+ hours per week, but based on my personal experiences and the experiences of some of my classmates, I beg to differ.
You will most likely want to plan to study for at least two hours for every hour of class. For example, in your first year, you will study Torts, Contracts and Criminal Law. Each class is 3 ½ hours a week. This means you should plan on studying and preparing for each class about 7 hours per week or 21 hours total.
If your law school gives you a break between the end of classes and the beginning of finals (often called “Reading Week”), it is important to effectively use that time to study! In this post, we give you some tips on how to study during Reading Week.
Depending on the number of classes you have, I would generally say about 4–5 per semester (approximately 8–10 per year).
From their first year to their third year, they have to read AT LEAST 45 TEXTBOOKS in eight different bar examination subjects: civil law, commercial law, criminal law, labor law, legal ethics, political law, remedial law and taxation.
At 60 hours of study per week, you can still get 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. But you might have to forego much of the partying, TV-watching, gaming, and part-time work during law school.
So, in general, the answer to this commonly asked question is that yes, lawyers need to have good memories. Frequently we do memorize laws related to our practice areas. But no, we do not memorize all laws.
South DakotaEasiest Bar Exams to Pass South Dakota ranks as the state with the easiest exam, followed by Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Iowa. There are fewer law schools in these states (South Dakota only has one, and Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Iowa each have two), meaning that there are generally fewer law graduates who take the bar.
Study, Plan, and Get Ahead Studying tops this list, because without classes, reading week is a time to take a breath, step back, and assess school work. That's not to say you should spend your entire week studying, but it is an excellent opportunity to plan, or even to get ahead.
a week, usu midway through a university term, during which there are no classes or lectures, intended for students to concentrate on reading or research.
In American colleges, this period is known as a Reading Period. Generally, this period is one week long and free of classes or assessment, permitting students to spend the period revising material, generally in preparation for final exams.
While creating your own outlines may sound daunting or overly time consuming, it is through this process that you will begin to develop the skills necessary to understand the law in a way that will help you apply the rules to a new set of facts.
In an exam setting, you will also be operating under pressure with time constraints and need to be able to fluidly and systematically think through each and every step of the legal analysis. Since your outline is being created to help you study and be successful on your finals, the format and flow of your outline should mimic this thought process.
As noted, it is generally a good idea to work on your outlines throughout the semester. If you reserve time after class each week, this time consuming process will not impede your final exam study time at the end of the semester.
I hate to do it, but I am going to have to give you the quintessential lawyerly answer “it depends”. It depends on what year you are, the class, and your professor.
It’s not necessarily that professors assign fewer readings in higher-level courses, it’s more accurate to say that most students just don’t read as diligently. “As diligently” is probably a gross understatement. It would be more accurate to say that many of us simply don’t do the readings or skim portions of them.
It’s a challenge for 1Ls to manage the immense amount of reading assignments they are given weekly. Especially when you combine them with all of the extracurriculars going on at the law school.
The general rule is to spend an hour to two hours of reading for each hour of class time. This varies of course, sometimes professors assign considerably more than two hours’ worth of reading and sometimes they assign considerably less. However, it’s a good general rule of thumb.
I hope that this article has given you a realistic idea of what the reading load is really like in law school and some useful tips on how you can manage it.
You cannot learn everything about every law for every class perfectly. Focus on the portions of the law that your professor emphasized in class or seemed to care about the most. Focus on what your professor has tested in the past. Be smart about how you spend your study time.
Memorizing is hard work. You cannot memorize outlines all day. Instead, incorporate frequent breaks into your studying. You can also give yourself a break by doing different tasks throughout the day (i.e., instead of saying, “I’m going to memorize outlines all day,” incorporate other tasks like practicing exams or reading supplements).
Final exams are just around the corner! If your law school gives you a break between the end of classes and the beginning of finals (often called “Reading Week”), it is important to effectively use that time to study! In this post, we give you some tips on how to study during Reading Week.
There is no right way to make a schedule for reading week; the important thing is that you make one and do your best to stick to it! How to divide your time depends on your personal feelings about the different classes you took that semester.
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