0L:1L Law School BOOTCAMP FB.pdf - Ae282

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BEAT THE CURVE 0L/1L BOOTCAMP Everything You Need to Know to CRUSH Your First Year of Law School Hello there! Thank you so much for expressing interest in my law school bootcamp prep course. In this flyer (I guess it’s a “flyer,” right?), I will: (1) tell you a little about myself; (2) explain why I decided to teach this course; (3) describe what you’ll learn in the course; and (4) provide all the logistical details about signing-up for the course. If you are a bad reader (like me) or have A.D.D. (like me) or are just plain lazy (like me) here is the TL;DR version with everything you need to know. YOU REALLY ONLY NEED TO READ THIS FIRST PAGE. 1. I am an attorney currently practicing at a big law firm. I finished my first semester at a T20 law school with straight A’s in all of my core classes. I am not smart . . . but, like seriously . . . I am not. And I am a terrible reader! So, if I can do it, you can do it too. You cannot do it, however, if you simply follow your professors’ instructions. (Or at least it will be exponentially harder to do and nearly impossible.) Sorry. But that’s the hard truth. My method might not be the “only method,” but it’s the only method that worked for me. And it will work for you too.1 2. I am teaching this course because I get pissed off when I think about the way law school is taught. Professors intentionally “hide the ball,” make their courses way more stressful than necessary, and I also genuinely like helping people. 3. In my course you’ll first learn what NOT to do (i.e., many of the things your professors and peers will tell you to do). Then you’ll learn my technique, which is 100% results oriented. For example, most classes are graded 100% based on the final exam. So, I’ll teach you everything there is to know about law school exams and how to ace them.2 We’ll go through some together. I’ll provide you tools to properly study for your final exams starting from your first day of law school, provide materials you’ll use to study, teach you how to nail any “cold call” in class, and teach you all the ways to succeed in law school. You’ll watch your peers slave away on work that will only hurt them on their exams while you will methodically breeze through the materials at record-pace. 4. My course will last approximately three hours and will take place on Saturdays from 12:00 pm (PST) - 3:00pm (PST). (You only need to take one course.) The course will cost $150.00 and will include several written materials that you’ll be able to use during the school year to help you study and learn. 5. Lastly, if you do not find value in my course, I WILL GIVE YOU YOUR MONEY BACK! MONEY BACK GUARANTEE! That’s how confident I am that my course will provide you immense value. OH, and I can also connect you with some of my prior students who can vouch for the value of the course! : ) 1 If you are skeptical, good; you should be. I can provide you referrals from other students who have taken my course! 2 This is super embarrassing and nerdy, but I actually really enjoy taking law school exams. They are like puzzles and are super fun. I’ll teach you how to enjoy them just like I do. Also, your professors WILL NOT teach you how to effectively take law school exams. They somehow expect you to just…know? 1 THE FULL (LONG) VERSION FOR YOU GUNNERS OUT THERE! I. Who Are YOU to Tell ME What to Do? You’re Not My FATHER! My name is Brian. I earned my undergraduate degree at an unranked state school. From there, I somehow managed to score in the top 10 percentile on my LSAT,3 which landed me on the waitlist at a T20 law school. Shockingly, I was accepted off the waitlist and it took all but 5 minutes for my excitement to morph into dread. CUT TO: EXT. LAW SCHOOL COURTYARD – DAYTIME We pan to the courtyard of a beautiful law school campus in Southern California. The courtyard is filled with fresh-faced incoming first- year law students congregating in groups for Fall orientation. The sun is shining and it’s a beautiful day. The incoming law students sit in circles introducing themselves by name, where they attended undergrad, and some shitty icebreaker one-by-one. LAW STUDENT # 1 MY NAME IS CHAD, I WENT TO HARVARD FOR UNDERGRAD WHERE I EARNED MY DEGREE IN PHYSICS IN THREE YEARS. BECAUSE I WAS OFFERED A FULL-RIDE TO ATTEND WHARTON, YOU KNOW, PENN, I FIGURED WHY NOT? SO, I WENT ON TO EARN MY MBA AND NOW I’M HERE BECAUSE MY DAD SAID I NEED A LAW DEGREE TO ACCESS MY TRUST FUND. I FUCKING HATE MY DAD. LAW STUDENT # 2 THAT’S AWESOME CHAD. MY NAME IS CHAD TOO. I WENT TO YALE FOR UNDERGRAD BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE MY FATHER AND GRANDFATHER WENT. TO BE HONEST, I FOUND IT RATHER BORING, SO I FIGURED I’D GO TO LAW SCHOOL. That’s basically how I remember my law school orientation. Surrounded by the “Chads,” I felt pretty out of place. I grew up in a small farm town in Southern Oregon and, until then, I had never even met anyone who went to an Ivy League school. To say I was intimidated would be an understatement. On top of that, I’m basically dyslexic and functionally illiterate. So, my goal going into law school was to just to pass.4 Once classes began, I was immediately overwhelmed by the amount of assigned reading. Case after case after case. All boring, too. Around this time, I asked my professor the most important question I would ever ask in law school: 3 True story: I ran out of time on the last logic game and, quite literally, marked “C, C, C.” for the last three questions in the section. When I saw my score I thought, “there’s no way! I completely guessed on three questions!” So, I looked up the answers to that logic game and, lo and behold, the answers were “C, C, C.” If there is a God, he truly hated me enough to make me a lawyer. 4 I can’t tell you how many times my father reminded me of the same old tired joke, “Q. What do you call a law student who finishes last in his class? A. A lawyer!” Thanks, dad—for always having faith in me. 2 “Professor, do you have any advice for how to memorize all these cases for the final exam?” The professor gave me a puzzled look. “Uhhh, no? You do not need to memorize any cases.” “Oh, ok. So, we just need to know the basic facts and how each case was resolved?” “No. No. No. No, you do not.” At this point, I think we were both puzzled. “So, I don’t need to know any of these cases? You know, the hundreds and hundreds of pages of cases you make us read every night? The ones that were written in horribly anachronistic, convoluted, and painfully boring legalese? The ones that are literally making me consider suicide?” “NO BRIAN! YOU DO NOT!” “WELL THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU MAKING US READ HUNDREDS OF THEM EVERY NIGHT AND, EVEN WORSE, MAKING US WRITE OUT SUMMARIES FOR EACH ONE?” “Because that’s part of law school, Brian. You just have to do it. It’s just how it’s been done for hundreds of years” And that’s the last time I ever read a case. It was at that point I developed my own system for success. And that system did not involve reading boring old cases written hundreds of years ago about “hairy hands,”5 Smoke Balls,6 or exploding fireworks falling from trains.7 I then developed my own system and never looked back. The scariest thing about your first year of law school is that you don’t see any grades until after your final exams, which are usually worth 100 percent of your grade. As a result, I wouldn’t learn whether my system—a system that everyone told me was “stupid,” “dumb,” “would never work”—was brilliant or, in fact, dumb. But I trusted my instincts and then I started receiving scores from my final exams. First one came in: “A.” They must have made a mistake! There’s no way. Then the next one: “A.” And so on and so forth. With my first semester GPA, I received offers at OCI (“On Campus Interviews”) to work at some of the best law firms in the entire world. And the rest is history. 5 Ever see the movie The Paperchase? See Hawkins v McGee (1929, New Hampshire). 6 Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Co. (England, 1892). 7 Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co. (New York, 1928). 3 Figure 1 Law School Transcript After First Semester 8 Figure 2 Email confirming summer associate offer from Kirkland & Ellis [Ranked No. 6 Firm in U.S.] 8 In the interest of full transparency, these are my first semester scores in all of my CORE law school classes. There was another 2-credit course called “Law, Language, and Values” that I removed from this transcript because you will almost certainly NOT take that course. It’s a course specific to the law school that I attended and, to be honest, it was a bullshit course of no significance. 4 II. Why Teach This Course? I want to teach this course because I remember how scared I was when I started law school. To this day I still have stress nightmares from time to time. I also remember how much of my life (and braincells) I wasted doing boring and soul-crushing work before I developed my own system. I want to save as many people as I can from falling into that trap. During law school you will be told by every one of your professors to read countless boring, old, confusing, and soul-crushing cases. I want to save you from that torture. I also like seeing people succeed and I enjoy helping people. (You know, Karma and all that stuff.) III. What Will You Learn from My Course? Before I describe the topics that we’ll cover in my course, let me briefly explain why it’s so important to take this course before your first semester. Most people will tell you that your first semester is the most difficult. While that statement has some truth to it, your first semester is also—by far—the easiest semester to seriously separate yourself from your peers and to beat the curve. This is a complicated concept that we’ll cover in-depth in my course but let me try to explain it in the simplest terms possible. During your first year, the curve in each of your courses is set usually at around 3.3 GPA points (it varies by law school). And during your first semester, everyone in your class is equally clueless as to what’s going on because everyone is new to law school. (This is why people claim it’s the hardest semester—because you are clueless.) So, what ends up happening is everyone in the class performs poorly, which means everyone ends up scoring at around the middle of the curve. If, however, you can separate yourself from the rest of your class by performing better than poorly (notice I didn’t say you even have to perform “strongly”), then you have the greatest opportunity to really beat the curve. Every semester after your first, the rest of your class will begin to smarten-up and figure out how to do the whole “law school thing.” This will result in a tighter curve. So, getting ahead in the beginning of your first year is absolutely key! (Not to mention, your first semester grades are what determine whether you are eligible for that “Big Law” job in the sky.) Now, here are a few concepts you’ll learn in my course: 1. All of the details about what law school is really like (e.g., how does cold-calling work? What is the homework like? What is the workload like? How are grades calculated? What is the “curve” and how does it work? 9). 9 Not only is this point very important as it relates to how to earn good grades, but it is also much more complicated and consequential than you might think. 5 2. What are final exams like?10 Did you know that most professors (i.e., ALL processors) do not actually teach you what they expect you to write on your final exams? How can they expect you to succeed if you do not know what is expected of you? Also, did you know that most professors post their past exams to your law school’s website on your first day of class? I promise you they won’t tell you that fact until just days before your exam (if they tell you at all). Think of the advantage you’ll have over your classmates with that information! 3. Most importantly, I will teach you a system to prepare for final exams from DAY ONE of class. Your peers will be frantically scrambling in mid-panic attack just a few weeks before final exams trying to organize and cram literally thousands of pages of disorganized notes to prepare for their exams. By that point in the semester, you’ll already feel completely confident and ready to take those exams. 4. How to get a “Big Law” job? (i.e., how to be the most popular student during on- campus interviews, how to WOW big firms, etc.). I am literally the associate at my law firm that goes to law schools to conduct on-campus-interviews for my firm. You can trust my advice. 5. How to become an excellent legal writer. While your legal writing course is not worth that many credits, it is BY FAR the most important course when it comes to actually becoming a successful lawyer. Also, law firms ask to see your writing sample when making hiring decisions. 6. You’ll receive written materials like course outlines, supplements, cheat-sheets, practice exams, etc. 7. Answers to any and all of your questions. 8. Much much more! ! DISCLAIMER ! I want to make one thing absolutely clear: NOTHING taught in my course will violate ANY academic rule, or any other rule for that matter. Nothing I teach will even be in the “grey” area of the rules. As you’ll learn during your first-year orientation, as well as you will learn when you become a practicing lawyer, following the rules is sacrosanct. I will absolutely NEVER advise you to break, bend, or stretch ANY rules. All law schools, along with all state bars, have an absolute zero tolerance policy on academic honesty and cheating. So, you can rest assured that nothing taught in my class will violate any rules. 10 In most classes, final exams are worth 100 PERCENT of your grade! There is nothing more important than understanding exactly how to crush your final exams and you can start perfecting that skill before your first day of class! 6 IV. Logistical Details: Schedule, Payment, Contact, Etc. Group Class: • 3 Hours Each Dates: • On Saturdays from 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm (PST), starting May 8, 15, 22, 29, etc. Cost: • $150.0011 Payment: • PayPal - [email protected] • Venmo - @BrianMiller (last 4 digits of my phone number, if asked = 6883) • Zelle – [email protected] When you pay, please provide your email address and which class (date) that you’d like to take, along with your payment. Once I receive your email address, you will receive a written agreement, in which you will promise not to record and/or distribute the course or written materials. From there, I will send you a Zoom invite for the course. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please do not hesitate to email me at [email protected]. If you decide to take my course, please come up with a list of all questions you’d like me to answer as well as any topics you’d like me to cover in class. I can’t wait to work with you! 11 As previously mentioned, if you take my course and think it was a waste of your time, then I will give you your money back. Simple as that. No one has asked for their money back yet, and I do not expect anyone to ask for their money back in the future. This course is immensely valuable, and I guarantee (literally) that you will think so too! 7