Reading and Writing Skills to Help You Succeed in Law School

College graduates may feel like their writing and reading skills are as sharp as possible after college, but most students will need to level up in law school.

Legal writing is often said by law students to be among the hardest of first year courses. Court opinions and legal code can seem like an undiscovered language when compared to undergraduate texts. 

Learning better annotation, writing, and reasoning can provide a head start for both law school and legal practice. Moreover, practicing the skills outlined below can help you unlearn any bad habits you may have acquired in college.

Take Notes Like You’re Briefing a Legal Case

The textbooks and articles you read in college aimed to explain difficult concepts with clarity and concision. They may not always have been entertaining, but generally they’re written so you can take away enough key points to make sense of class discussions by jotting down a brief summary or a few notes and highlighting key passages for future reference for homework assignments and final exams.

Law school texts are much denser and more impenetrable. Law school requires students to critically read legal cases and analyze legal opinions as a means of learning how to interpret and apply laws. This approach is called the Case Method. 

Legal writing and judicial opinions can be elegant or even poetic, but they are not written for easy comprehension. A few highlighted passages will be little help when a law school professor first calls on you to quickly analyze and evaluate a judge’s opinion.

Law school students “brief” cases by first writing down important legal facts and findings. Then, they knit together intricate outlines of many pages in order to draw out common patterns and distinctions among cases.

To develop more consistent and rigorous methods of notetaking before law school, practice reading and summarizing an article as briefly as possible. Use color-coded highlights to separate different kinds of information, like evidence and conclusions. Rewrite the author's arguments in your own words and consider counterpoints.

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Write Clearly and Concisely

Everyone can look back at writing from their teenage years and find something cringeworthy. Pretentious, overconfident, and underdeveloped writing is called “sophomoric” for a reason!

In college, longer writing is rewarded, even if that means padding assignments with extra quotes and long-winded explanations. Leaving information out is more likely to lead to a bad grade than unnecessary filler. Some students get the misimpression that long and intricate sentences sound profound and serious.

If you find yourself referencing ideas you can’t explain yourself or using big words just to sound smart, cut out those tics before your law school classmates and professors cut you down to size.

Legal writing is focused and structured. In a legal memo, every sentence must contribute to the main argument, even on longer papers. Practice editing your own papers to be direct and concise, leaving out sentences not clearly related to your topic. 

Improve Your Analytical Skills

Taking intellectual risks is a part of college life, but so is learning the limits of your knowledge. Focus more on what you don’t yet know, rather than what you presume to understand. Follow the wisdom of Socrates, who said: “I know only one thing–that I know nothing.”

Legal writing needs to be understood universally, because laws are designed to cover everyone equally. You must present evidence to carefully ensure that everyone can understand your reasoning in the arguments you develop. Unlike in college, it’s not enough to simply share thoughts and reactions from your own personal perspective.

As you craft arguments in college, identify any unstated assumptions. Although common definitions and facts may not be worth pointing out, articulate less obvious assumptions that someone with a different perspective or background may not share. Clarify the path of your argument from premises to conclusions.

Reading, writing, and reasoning are bottomless wells. Continued practice will help you achieve more in law school. Even more importantly, honing these skills will make you a clearer thinker so you can lead a more intentional and rewarding life.

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