Law School Toolbox Experts Share: Non-Obvious Things That 1Ls Should Bring With Them and Why

Starting something new (especially law school) is stressful enough. You don’t need additional stress by forgetting essential items when you start classes. The Law School Toolbox experts are sharing some lesser known items to pack and bring with you in law school.

Before you read the tips, meet the individuals who are sharing advice with you.

Lee Burgess
Lee Burgess is the co-founder of Law School Toolbox. She graduated cum laude from the University of San Francisco School of Law, was a TA for Contracts and Torts, and was the Managing Editor of the USF Law Review. Lee left her law firm job and became a private California bar exam tutor and law school tutor when she realized her passion for helping students succeed in law school and pass the bar.

Alison Monahan
Alison Monahan is the co-founder of Law Exam Toolbox. She graduated from Columbia Law School in 2006 as a Kent Scholar, a Stone Scholar, and a member of the Columbia Law Review. She was also a Civ Pro TA. After law school, Alison clerked for a federal District Court judge and worked as a patent litigator in a large law firm in San Francisco. She eventually left to start The Girl’s Guide to Law School®, which is a leading resource for individuals embarking on a legal career.

Ariel Salzer
Ariel Salzer is a law school and California bar exam tutor for Law School Toolbox and Bar Exam Toolbox. She has taught everything from conjunctions to calculus on four different continents. As a student at the University of San Francisco School of Law, Ariel tutored Torts and led 1L workshops on time management, exam preparation, legal writing, and outlining. After practicing law as a product liability litigator in California for a number of years, Ariel found her way back to teaching and now enjoys helping students find success in their law school classes and on the bar exam.

Ben Nelson
Ben Nelson is a law school and California and Oregon bar exam tutor for Law School Toolbox and Bar Exam Toolbox. As the oldest child of two professors, he realized from an early age that he wanted to strike out on his own. He eventually settled on law school and graduated from Columbia in 2014 as a Kent Scholar and a Stone Scholar. When he is not tutoring, Ben is a legal fellow for Earthjustice in Denver, CO where he works to protect the iconic American Southwest and Rocky Mountains from overuse.

Non-Obvious Things That 1Ls Should Bring With Them and Why

Lee’s Advice:

Bring your lunch and/or dinner. Some law schools have really terrible food options. If you eat crappy food and feel crappy, you are going to have a harder time paying attention in class and effectively studying. So, if you don’t have good options at school, bring food with you. You will feel so much better during the day, and you will likely even save money by not buying expensive salads (that aren’t even very good) at the student union.

Alison’s Advice:

It’s critical to set up a workspace at home that works for you. Even if you prefer, as a general rule, to study elsewhere, there are almost certainly going to be times when you need to print out some materials or do some reading at home. Having a good quality printer and scanner at hand will drastically simplify your life when it counts. As will a nice chair and good lighting, for those times when you really can’t face going to the law library again.

Ariel’s Advice:

A yellow steno pad of paper (or just ruled, colored paper that you can draw a line down the middle of). If you write quick bullet point case briefs down the left column, you can use the other side (the blank, right-hand column) in class to edit your brief based on what your Prof. thinks is important, and you can make notes about that case from lecture. In other words—one case, one sheet of paper. Using colored paper can make these briefs stand out after you put them back into your binder in chron. order with your other handwritten notes, or printed lecture notes (on white paper), or once things start getting shuffled around when you’re outlining. If you’re typing your class notes and not planning to print them before outlining, the color-coding aspect may not matter so much for you. In any case, I did this my first semester of law school and it made outlining a breeze. If you only jot down the most important legally significant points from each case, and then annotate them with your Prof’s comments, you can save yourself a ton of time slogging through lengthy, disorganized notes later. I found outlining was alwaysway easier if I had handwritten case briefs and lecture notes (less unnecessary info. to sort through).

A consistently color-coded scheme for highlighting (book briefing) your cases is always a great idea too, so bring or buy highlighters. In my first semester, I also designated one color of highlighter just to “Prof. notes.” In other words, any time the Prof. said something particularly crucial about attack planning or the main take-away point from a case (as opposed to some other student commenting, or the Prof. just making minor background notes in lecture), I would highlight in that special Prof. color. That way, when I went back to make outlines, it was really clear what the most important points were from lecture, and I could be sure it was actually coming straight from the Prof., not my own words, or another student’s. You don’t want to run into the outlining situation where you don’t remember where the rule in your notes is coming from. Also, even though some people don’t jot down notes on other student comments in lecture, I found this really helpful in remembering class hypotheticals in detail so I could practice writing out answers to them on my own later.

Ben’s Advice:

An extra light laptop computer because this is what you’ll be glued to for the next three years, and you don’t want to add too much weight to your 15 pound backpack. Also a book stand (“recipe book holder”) to hold open case books while you outline from them.

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Non-Obvious Things That 1Ls Should Bring With Them and Why

Lee’s Advice:

Alison’s Advice:

Ariel’s Advice:

Ben’s Advice:

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