(Part 2) Best products from r/law

Something that seems to help me, and I am very simialr but in another field, is a notebook you take EVERYWHERE, I personally use cheap 5 star college ruled semi hard back letter sized notebooks. I used to use nice hard bound journal style but I found the smaller size kept me from using them as much. You start your day by writing all the tasks you need to accomplish, and then hit the work. Knocking items off the list and crossing them out gives you a reward of sorts to keep you motivated. Each day, you start by copying everything you didnt accomplish from yesterdays list, along with anything new. You cant be afraid to let this list GROW. This isnt a "must get done today" list, it is a running list of things that need to be accomplished at some point. There are a number of systems out there for then ranking / labeling each item to ensure priorities. I like to either mark or highlight the items that are must get dones today, or to start a new page / list that is NOT a to do list, it is a "Get Done" list for today. This helps with prioritizing, and also helps with not feeling bogged down by the running list having too many items. Search lifehacker.com for their to-do articles for more info on good systems.

You can also augment this by adding an actual reward for each item you finish, including a weighting system. Finish a small task that is low pri, go grab a candy bar from the vending machine, finish a big high pri task, take lunch early and go to a fave place (not some place that you are going to sit and spend 2-3 hours procrastinating tho!)

I work in tech, and I find the same issues with electronic lists and reminders to not be enough, I need the process of writing and having something in front of me that I look at that cant be hidden by another window.

All that said, you have to have SOME level of WANT. You cannot overcome a disinterest in your field with methods. If you hate being a lawyer, no system will help you not procrastinate enough to make you successful and like it. But if it IS just a matter of bad time management and medical issues, you can ALWAYS change that.

I would HIGHLY reccomend you read the following books, they are GREAT and are easy reads that you can knock out over a few days:

-It's Called Work for a Reason!: Your Success Is Your Own Damn Fault by Larry Winget (http://www.amazon.com/Its-Called-Work-Reason-Success/dp/159240281X)

-Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life: A Kick-Butt Approach to a Better Life by Larry Winget(http://www.amazon.com/Shut-Stop-Whining-Get-Life/dp/1118024516)

Both books are great to help change your mindset, IMO

This advice isn't especially good (as is almost all advice on TLS that isn't related to law school admissions).

1. Sure, skim GTM over the summer. It shouldn't take you more than a day or two. But just read it enough to get the concept of a fork. You need not even attempt to memorize the 250 pages of different forks the authors invent to fill pages.
   
   
2. Hornbooks are terrible. They are not in-depth enough for what you will cover in the semester, and they have far too much breadth for your purposes. They exist for researchers to locate concepts, and then get cites to dozens of cases on point, which can then be Shepardized to find hundreds of additional cases.
   
   Take Prosser on torts. Informed consent comes up in 1L torts, and a paragraph or two is on the basics, but not enough for your purposes. Then it goes into very esoteric concepts, like whether a doctor can remove an organ from a child with the parents consent (perhaps not), or when the organ is being removed for the benefit of the child's sibling (perhaps).
   
   This will not be on your final.
   
   
3. Sure, some vocabulary might be nice, but you'll pick up the difference between formalism and realism quickly enough.
   
   Really, the conclusion is the best advice. Just relax. Try to go out drinking with your friends (if that is your thing) and get it out of your system, because if you won't to beat the curve, in addition to working smarter than everyone else, you need to work harder than everyone except those people who are needlessly torturing themselves.
   
   If you do want something to do, here are some suggestions:
   
   
4. This book teaches you how to brief cases, and has the benefit of being only about 100 pages. Ironically, these are really the only cases I have ever briefed in law school. Briefing is about knowing what info is important in a case, not about producing a written document. Being able to spot issues on day 1 helps.
   
   
5. This book, same author as above (he was a prof at NYU for many years) offers succinct advice on writing law school exam answers. In short, spot an issue, apply the law, arrive at a conclusion, move on. It's amazing how many 1Ls will say write a history of personal jurisdiction law on an exam (useless) before writing the simple paragraph about how the D will contest PJ as he is not domiciled in the forum state (what the prof wants).
   
   But really, here is how to read the law, and here is how to write exams, is all there is to learning about law school. The real work is then learning the law, and there are not a lot of shortcuts there (or at least none that I would trust; everyone claims to have a system, but you only get one crack at this).
   
   Finally, this is a post I wrote recently for someone else on the use of supplements. It's not relevant until you get into school though (but I guess if you are asking about prepping for law school in September, you are either going to UChicago (hyper-gunner) or you have a year until you start, so maybe you will look into this.

I agree with bl1y.

I'm 3 years practicing with my second law review article getting published in around a month.

My first article topic came by looking at what I experienced as a practitioner every day. Pretty soon I got a feeling that maybe the courts were not applying a rule the way I perceived it should be applied. So, I looked into different cases where I thought the rule was inconsistent or at least not reconcilable. Turns out, there were a bunch.

My second article topic came from regularly reading decisions from the top court in my state. While doing that, I was not looking for a topic, but I did notice a pattern of things that generated dissents or concurrences. The judges almost had a funny way of discussing this topic and it caught my eye. It never occurred to me when reading that this was an article waiting to be written. Instead, it was only after about a year or so of reading cases that the topic gelled as article-worthy when someone asked if I would be interested in writing an article and they were looking for topics. It turned into a ~30-page law review article exploring the topic, history, and those recent decisions.

Not sure if your girlfriend was part of an academic journal in law school, but the idea is the same: anyone can write a case study. Rather, it is the synthesis of various cases and legal rules that adds meaning and broadens literature.

I want to say that I did all my research before I wrote a page. The truth is that writing itself is an organic process. You often need to start a little bit of writing to find more relevant literature.

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For me, the idea of finding a topic is like nucleation sites for crystals. For example, see this video of supercooled water. The idea of supercooled water and "instant" ice is that the water is cold enough to be ice, but it needs a place to start. Once it starts, however, the entire bottle of water changes phase. So, you could be ready to write an article, but you still need that spark, the place to start and to build from. That can come from (like the video shows) outside agitation (or impurities but lets not get to heavy into the science).


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Eugene Volokh has a book called Academic Legal Writing. I found it particularly helpful during law school and still to this day. But I remember it being cheaper back then. In any event, it covers issues from the genesis of ideas to the methodology of good research to better writing.

This is not going to help with details, but you've already gotten some great advice on that. I want to recommend a book that a few of my PD friends recommended to me, and I have to say, it's really inspiring and apparently motivating for those times when you feel like your client is indefensible and wonder why you're even there. I forget whether links are () or [] and I'm on my phone so: http://www.amazon.com/Angel-Death-Row-Penalty-Defense/dp/B008SM0WQO. Good luck!

It's even more complicated than that. Here's Virginia's law on this (Virginia being the home of Carrie Buck of Buck v. Bell fame).

> § 54.1-2976. Sterilization operations for certain adults incapable of informed consent.

> It shall be lawful for any physician licensed by the Board of Medicine to perform a vasectomy, salpingectomy, or other surgical sexual sterilization procedure on a person eighteen years of age or older, who does not have the capacity to give informed consent to such an operation, when:

> 1. A petition has been filed in the circuit court of the county or city wherein the person resides by the person's parent or parents, guardian, spouse, or next friend requesting that the operation be performed;

> 2. The court has made the person a party defendant, served the person, the person's guardian, if any, the person's spouse, if any, and if there is no spouse, the person's parent with notice of the proceedings and appointed for the person an attorney-at-law to represent and protect the person's interests;

> 3. The court has determined that a full, reasonable, and comprehensible medical explanation as to the meaning, consequences, and risks of the sterilization operation to be performed and as to alternative methods of contraception has been given by the physician to the person upon whom the operation is to be performed, to the person's guardian, if any, to the person's spouse, if any, and, if there is no spouse, to the parent;

> 4. The court has determined (i) that the person has been legally adjudged to be incapacitated... and (ii) that the person is unlikely to develop mentally to a sufficient degree to make an informed judgment about sterilization in the foreseeable future;

> 5. The court, to the greatest extent possible, has elicited and taken into account the views of the person concerning the sterilization, giving the views of the person such weight in its decision as the court deems appropriate;

> 6. The court has complied with the requirements of § 54.1-2977; and

> 7. The court has entered an order authorizing a qualified physician to perform the operation not earlier than thirty days after the date of the entry of the order, and thirty days have elapsed. The court order shall state the date on and after which the sterilization operation may be performed.

[Same basic rules apply to court-ordered sterilization of children between 14 and 18. Va Code § 54.1-2975]

> § 54.1-2977. Standards for court-authorized sterilization of certain persons.

> A. In order for the circuit court to authorize the sterilization of a person in accordance, it must be proven by clear and convincing evidence that:

> 1. There is a need for contraception. The court shall find that the person is engaging in sexual activity at the present time or is likely to engage in sexual activity in the near future and that pregnancy would not usually be intended by such person if such person were competent and engaging in sexual activity under similar circumstances;

> 2. There is no reasonable alternative method of contraception to sterilization;

> 3. The proposed method of sterilization conforms with standard medical practice, and the treatment can be carried out without unreasonable risk to the life and health of the person; and

> 4. The nature and extent of the person's mental disability renders the person permanently incapable of caring for and raising a child. The court shall base this finding on empirical evidence and not solely on standardized tests.

> B. The criteria set out in subsection A of this section shall be established for the court by independent evidence based on a medical, social, and psychological evaluation of the person upon whom the sterilization operation is to be performed.

The basic concepts of patent law are easy to understand. The U.S. patent law Wikipedia page explains the broad ideas such as what things can be patented and what the pre-requisites are for obtaining a patent. Beyond that you’ll have to get more specific about what you're interested in.

If you want to know why a company would choose trade secret protection over patent protection, or the difference between trademarks and copyrights you’ll need a broader understanding of IP. In law school you would take an IP class and read a hundred cases explaining the nuances of each area of law. The law student shortcut is to read the “nutshell” or the E&E. Both references highlight the black letter law (the concrete legal rules) while the E&E also includes questions and answers that expose some of the subtleties within the law. This is probably what you’re looking for.

If you’d rather know the nitty-gritty about patent prosecution—how you obtain a patent—then you’ll need to understand the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure. Assuming you don’t care about things like how many months you have to file a response to an examiner’s first office action, I’d focus on chapter 2100, which deals with the statutory requirements for obtaining a patent (as a bonus, chapter 2400 deals entirely with issues surrounding biotechnology).

If your background has you interested in pharmaceuticals then you’ll probably also want to consider how the Hatch-Waxman Act affects the patenting process. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with Hatch-Waxman so I don’t feel comfortable suggesting a source. Beyond these basics there’s also patent litigation, licensing, and all the policy considerations that go into intellectual property law. But these sources should give you a good starting point.

That was fun to watch, but it's better to read.

The departures from historical accuracy taken by the producers of this program and their infusion of corny crap (like the slow clap after Cicero's address) were very distracting to me.

But the general story and the focus on Cui Bono? was well preserved.

This is a very good book to read, especially if you're involved in criminal law. Pro Ruscio Amerino shows a young, ambitious, politically minded lawyer treading a very fine line between the powers that be, justice, and his ambition to join the powers that be. He spends a great deal of time driving a wedge between Chrysogonous and Sulla before dragging Chrysogonous' name through the mud.

His rhetorical style should not be copied, as it was designed and delivered for an audience and a world that hasn't existed for 2,000 years, but there are some things that simply never change. His work can be highly instructive for those of us engaged in public speaking of the advocate's kind.

>1) Where can I read through all the British Laws?

If you started today, you'd be done by the time you were ready for retirement.

>How does everyone else go about knowing laws?

Generally, they don't. People apply common sense and count on that to get them through the day. Most of the time it does. Sometimes it doesn't.

If you want a general primer on laws, a good starting point would probably be to get an LPC study review book. Something like this one just a bit more up to date, preferably.

>2) What are articles? And consequently, are there other categories similar to them (acts perhaps?)

Acts are what you generally thing of as the law, i.e. the primary statutory instruments that sets out codified law.

Articles could mean a number of things, and doesn't have as clear meaning as acts do.

Yes, there are other categories. Regulations, for examples, are usually more detailed laws that are promulgated by government agencies with specific areas of authority, like city planning, etc.

The UK is a common law jurisdiction, which also means that the decisions of courts are law.

>3) So there're laws for the UK, but there are also EU laws?

Yes, correct. And until Brexit happens, EU law generally trumps UK law. (There's also disctinctions between the laws of the UK. England and Wales is generally one jurisdiction, Scotland another and Northern Ireland a third).

>Or treaties signed between countries?

Yes. Lots of them.

>So are their other lists to cover all agreements between countries, or across collective groups such as the EU?

Sure. Pretty much anything you can imagine, someone has made a law, regulation or treaty about.

I highly recommend A Diplomatic History of the American People, by Bailey.

It's not strictly a book on legal history, but it's an excellent overview of the development of American foreign policy and diplomacy, an area where lawyers thrive. Bailey is a remarkably good writer, and you'll be engaged throughout the book. It'll be great reading when you take a break from bar review which won't be totally off-topic.

Illinois Justice by Kenneth Manaster.

Its a really fascinating and entertaining inspection of one of Illinois' worst political scandals, one that ended the Illinois Supreme Court chief justice's hopes of joining the US Supreme Court while also beginning current Justice Stevens' rise to fame. Gives good insight into some of the subtleties of judicial corruption.

http://www.amazon.com/Illinois-Justice-Scandal-1969-Stevens/dp/0226502430/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346290164&sr=8-1&keywords=illinois+justice

Just finished a law degree in England, so I can give you the resources I used. Webb and Akkouh's book on trusts is relatively short and quite a good introduction. Parker and Mellow's book goes into more detail, but is older, so a bit outdated in parts. I never used Virgo's book but it was recommended to me by quite a few people. If you want the "authoritative" textbook then you'll probably want Megarry and Wade, but it's rather dense and may be too much for your purposes.

There have been a few pretty influential trusts cases in the past couple of years (including a rather important one overturning 120 years of law just this morning!) so you won't just be able to rely on any of these books absolutely, but I assume you're familiar with this if you're doing a masters.

>different aspects of medieval law (the use of Roman law, customary law, feudal law, etc.) primarily in England, France, and/or the HRE from roughly the 11th century up to the Renaissance

Do you have any idea just how massive a subject this is? You're describing four distinct legal systems over a period of five centuries. And yes, I do mean four: England, France, the HRE, and the Roman Catholic Church, which maintained its own legal system in parallel to those maintained by civil authorities of various stripes. Though arguably more than four, as there are discontinuities in the political situations in those jurisdictions over time (e.g., the Norman Conquest in AD 1066 resulted in significant, long-lasting changes to the legal system in England).

And really, while the HRE certainly had its own legal system, the HRE itself was made up of hundreds of individual political units, each of which maintained their own legal systems. As far as that goes, if you think about the relationship between individual US states and the US federal government, you're kind of in the right ballpark, but relationship was not nearly so close, and the diversity between legal systems across various HRE jurisdictions was far more significant than exists under the US system of federalism. The Holy Roman Emperor (and the imperial government generally) exerted far less direct control over most of its constituent polities than the US federal government does over US state and local governments.

All of which to say. . . it depends on the level of detail you're looking for. Your post sounds fairly granular on both the jurisdictional and source-of-law levels. IF you want that, I highly doubt you're going to find a single book that covers more than one legal system for any length of time. But there are definitely books that attempt to trace the macro-level development of Western European legal systems, sometimes reaching back as far as the classical period in Greece. Here's one. This one seems to focus more on France and England, but there's mention of Germanic legal systems in the TOC. Here's another. From the TOC, the period you're interested in is covered in basically one chapter. Probably some good information in there, but there just can't be all that much detail.

See what I mean?