ZiefBrief

Studying for Law School Finals During Pandemic

The Bay Area is not a great place to live if you need to work or study from home. Housing is expensive, living spaces are small, and older buildings have serous noise issues. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, I am typing this post in my kitchen/home office--I share a 3-room, 1 BR apartment with my spouse. He has claimed the living room in the front of the apartment, and I have claimed the kitchen. How do you concentrate under these conditions? Briana Borgolini has written a great article on how to study at home if you're used to studying in the law library. I found her tips really useful--hope you do as well!

Study Aids to Help 1Ls (and others) Ace Their Classes

The Zief has a wealth of materials intended to help students better understand the law. While nothing will take the place of reading the case book and briefing the cases you read, everyone needs an occasional helping hand digesting legal concepts.  The tools available run the gamut from the very general to the highly specialized. We have broken down what we think are the things you might use (and the things you should avoid) in being as prepared as possible for class. The attached handy chart is color coded to help you identify source that are recommended (green), those that have some drawbacks (yellow) and those that you should think twice about before using (red). Click on the image to see it full size.

If you would like a recommendation about a particular source or subject just ask a research librarian.

 

 

Eliminating Distractions While You Study

We are now a month away from reading period, which means students start putting in some serious studying hours.  But if you're distracted by text messages and social media, you're not making the most of your study time.  A colleague at Georgia State Law Library has some great anti-distraction app recommendations. Remember that Zief has free earplugs available at the circulation desk for our patrons who want to block out ambient noise.  Also, Club '59 on Zief's second floor is available for students seeking an extra-quiet study environment.  

Welcome First-Year Students! Some Key Info on the Law Library

Welcome to our OneL students!  We're so glad that you're here, and we want to be sure that you have some important information about the library readily available:

Visit the library's website for easy access to the following information:

• The law library's current hours (including important information about holiday closures);
  
  
• Our research librarians have created over 30 research guides to assist you as you learn legal research, including guides on California practice guides and treatises, federal and multi-jurisdictional practice guides and treatises, and much more;
  
  
• You can contact one of our research librarians for research help.  Stop by the library to ask a question in-person or contact us by chat, by text, or by phone.  Our research help guide will give you all of the details.
  
  
• The library has eight group study rooms, which you can reserve for 3-hour blocks of time by signing up at the library's front desk or calling the desk to make a reservation. You'll need to have at least one other study partner to reserve a group study room;
  
  
• We allow judicious consumption of food and drinks in the library -- if you're eating something that's crunchy or particularly strong-smelling, it's best to eat in the Kendrick student lounge;

And a few more tips to help you during your first semester:

• The library purchases one copy of every law school course required text.  These texts are available for check-out at the library's circulation desk for in-library use for 2-hour loan periods.
  
  
• Gleeson Library is open to currently enrolled law students with a working USF ID (swipe your ID for access).  It's located across the street from the law library, and Gleeson is open 24 hours a day, 5 days per week, beginning on August 28.  The glass atrium study area at Gleeson is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, beginning the last week of August.  Check the Gleeson Library hours page for each week's current hours.
  
  
• Want to know more about using TWEN?  Visit Westlaw's TWEN resources web page.

We look forward to meeting you all!

Resources to Stay Happy and Healthy While Practicing Law

A new website, Happy! Effective Lawyer, dedicated to helping attorneys take "affirmative steps to enhance your engagement, productivity, competency, and happiness," is launching on August 1 (but it's got plenty of great content now).  Lots of great material on exercise, mindfulness, and emotion management for lawyers.  

HeinOnline's Resources for Law School Students

OneLs are just becoming familiar with Lexis and Westlaw, but there's another important database out there, especially if you take a research assistant position or law review editorial position -- HeinOnline.  It's one of the largest image-based government document, law review article, and legal research databases, and it's a crucial resource for law review article research, legislative history research, and more.  

HeinOnline recently released a series of how-to videos, which are helpful resources if you're just getting started with this database. This post also suggests some great resources for OneLs, including the extremely helpful User's Guide to the Bluebook, by Alan Dworsky, a small booklet that quickly demystifies the process of Bluebook citation formatting.

Recovering from a Bad Exam Experience

It's easy for those of us who graduated from law school years ago to view our bad final exam experiences with some humor.  But when you're a law student, having a bewildering or tough exam experience can be really devastating.  The Law School Toolbox has some helpful tips designed to help you recover from a traumatic final exam.  My favorite tip -- be careful who you talk to -- a lesson I learned all too well during the first semester of law school when a classmate's post-exam comments about our Civ Pro final managed to convince me that I failed it (I didn't):

[B]e very careful who you talk to about this bad experience. Just as it’s counterproductive to freak yourself out with a litany of horrible thoughts, it’s counterproductive to commiserate with your stressed out classmates until everyone is in a frenzy of anxiety. Call your non-law school friends, a sibling, a parent, your shrink — they’re all potentially good sources of support and perspective. But going beyond, “Yeah, that sucked, right?” with classmates probably isn’t going to make you feel a whole lot better.

Saving Time During Finals

Titilayo Tinubu, founder of JD Job Coach, has some great tips for saving time during finals in this post on Ms JD.  Tops on her list - learning how to say "no."

Hotmail Not Welcome @ CALI

The folks at the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction have been inundated by malicious e-mails of late and they have identified that all the malifactors shared something in common: e-mail addresses that ended in "hotmail.com". As a result, they are banning all new accounts affiliated with Hotmail and anyone who had previously registered for CALI using a Hotmail address must either contact CALI with a non-Hotmail e-mail address or re-register, again with a non-Hotmail address in hand. Complete instructions are available at : http://www.cali.org/blog/2012/08/22/hotmail-accounts-banned-caliorg.

It's That Time Again: Suggestions for Pre-Law-School Summer Reading

In San Francisco it's pretty much chilly and gray all year round, so we look for other clues as to the season. One sign of summer is when ZiefBrief starts getting calls from newly-admitted law students wanting to know what to read to get ready for law school. We continue to maintain that the best thing to do is to enjoy the summer and arrive at school refreshed and ready for the experience.

But maybe what you enjoy is reading about law. In which case, these summer reading lists include interesting books that will give you some big-picture insights into the law.

• Suggested Summer Reading - University of Miami School of Law [PDF]
• Suggested Summer Reading List for Incoming First-Year Students - Case Western Reserve University School of Law
• Suggested Readings Prior to Law School - Willamette University College of Law [PDF]
• Suggested Summer Reading List - Ohio Northern University College of Law [Word doc]
• Suggested Summer Reading List - Boston College Law School