Ah, fall. When a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of law.

At about this time each year, a new crop of 1L’s will begin to run the 3-year gauntlet that will likely strip them of their accumulated net worth, most of their strong moral convictions, and all of their long-term mental health. Truly, it’s a magical season.

So I thought that now would be a good time to approach those fragile, nervous 1L’s and offer some advice on how to survive law school.

As you read my hard-won pearls of wisdom, here are some notes to bear in mind:

1) This is not advice on how to be the perfect law student. I wasn’t that person, and so I can’t really tell you how to reach those lofty heights. Instead, I’m offering advice on how to a) get high grades b) with a minimum of effort. I’m a slacker: so sue me.*

* Don’t really sue me.

2) My law school, known hereinafter as The-School-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, was an “elite” law school with a mandatory curve. Students who attend schools with a different grading policy, or a different style of exam, or a student body that isn’t prone to obsessive hyper-achievement will have to adjust their strategies accordingly.

3) Most importantly: Free advice is usually worth exactly what you paid for it.

And so, without further ado, here’s my 10-point plan for guaranteed law school success:

Tip #1) In law school, 95% of what you want to achieve will be based on grades. So, for most purposes, your GPA is the only metric that matters. As a practical matter, then, your only goal should be good grades.

When it comes to grades, of course, the exam is the only thing that matters. While you will spend most of your class time covering the minutia of various cases in great detail, bear in mind that the exam will be only four hours long. In that short span of time, your Professor isn’t very likely to test you on that minutia. So all you really need from a case (or a class session) is the “holding”, which is one or two sentences summarizing the rule that the case stands for. So read a case (and pay attention in class) with an eye towards identifying the holding: everything after that is gravy, and it can only help you, but it’s mostly unnecessary. (But see tip #3 for why this is half-wrong).

Also know: It’s entirely possible to figure out the holding of a case just by listening in class, without having done all of the reading the day before. So if preparing for class every day isn’t helpful for you, then don’t do it. This will be hard, and probably scary at first, because you won’t want to look stupid in front of the entire class when you’re called upon. So just remember: your goal is not to impress your friends, but to get the highest grade that you can. And grading is blind. Your reputation buys you nothing on exam day.

Here’s a trick I picked up: after your first semester, skip the first two days of every class. That’s usually when the seating chart is passed around, and if you miss those two days, then you won’t be on the chart at all - meaning that you will never be called on in class. If your Professor notices this (which is very unlikely), just have a good excuse for missing those days of class, and say that you just never got around to asking for a permanent seat assignment. She won’t mind.

This semester, of course, you’re already on the seating chart, and there’s not much you can do about it for now. But if you’re called on in class, and you’re not prepared for the day’s verbal sparring (because you’ve been preparing for the exam instead), here’s what you do: just say “pass”. It’s just one word, it’s easy to remember, but it works like magic. “Pass”.

Your Professor likely won’t care. Everybody misses a day of preparation from time to time. At most, all that’s likely to happen is that your Professor may deliberately called on you the very next day - knowing this, you can study for class that one night and come in prepared.

Very rarely, of course, some Professor who has watched the Paper Chase one too many times will go on an ill-advised power trip. If you try to pass on this Professor, he or she may want to humiliate you for your lack of preparation, and so he or she may 1) insist that you answer the questions or 2) make the whole class wait silently while you read the case. At my school, this never, ever happened, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen somewhere at some point. So bear in mind: The proper response to this behavior is simply to say “No”. That’s right, “no”. You’re not six years old, and you don’t have to unquestioningly obey adults any more. The Professor is not your boss (in fact, you pay his or her salary) and he or she simply has no right to force you to do anything.

What’s the worst case scenario, then? If what you care about is grades, then know that many Professors will reserve the right to lower your grade by 1/2 step if you’re routinely unprepared. This may be worth it: all the hours that you would have wasted in class preparation can now be put to better use preparing for the exam. Most likely, you’ll pick up more than a 1/2 bump in your final grade as a result.

Remember: the grade is the only thing that matters. Take my specific advice or leave it, but the key to lazy success is to focus on the metric that matters (grades) and refuse to do any work that doesn’t contribute to that goal.

Tip #2) On the other hand: when in doubt, follow the crowd. If most people are studying a certan way, or coming to class prepared every day, then there’s probably a good reason for it. Not always, certainly. But sometimes. So if you do decide to do something unorthodox (like never bothering to prepare for class, like I did) be sure you’re doing it because it’s the right decision for your study style.

Tip #3) This is key: Learn the Professor, not “the law”.

In your exams, you’ll probably be given a single “fact pattern”, which will run on for one or two pages. You’ll then be asked to analyze the potential legal issues, and determine how a court should think about the case and how it should ultimately rule.

On such an exam, the “right” legal answer, if such a thing exists, doesn’t matter. If you care about your grades, then what matters is what your Professor thinks the right answer is.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. And this is how law school may be different from college. In college, you were probably given exams where you were supposed to recite the correct answer. In law school, the “answer” is less about the ultimate outcome of the case (although agreeing with how the Professor thinks the hypothetical should come out never hurt anybody’s GPA) and more about the factors that go into determining the ultimate outcome of the case. This is because law school exams are deliberately written so that a court could go either way.

So your job, during the course of the semester, is to watch your Professor carefully and spot his or her patterns - when dealing with facts that look like X, he or she looks at Y first, then balances that against Z. That sort of thing.

This is why everybody makes outlines: an outline is like a collection of recipes. When you spot a fact pattern or issue that seems familiar, you can look for that issue on your outline and see, in a glance, all the factors that you should talk about before deciding what the ultimate outcome of the case should be. Identify the issues that your Professor thinks are important, mention the right factors or tests or cases to resolve the decision, and then decide how you think the case should come out. That’s all there is to a law school exam.

The bottom line is: know your Professor. You’re not being tested on “the law”, whatever that means. You’re being tested on your Professor. You want to know how she thinks, how she talks, the phrases she likes to use habitually, the factors that she considers most important. Really, if you can just parrot that stuff back on the exam, you’ll do well, possibly very well.

An anecdote may help make the point: one semester, I was taking my Copyright class pass/fail. I literally never showed up for class, and I never even bought the book. But a friend of mine attended the class, and she took class notes that were very nearly a transcript of what the Professor had said each day. So, four hours before the exam, I read through those class notes. That was all the preparation I did. Four hours, all semester. But had I taken that class for a grade, I would have received a B+. The moral? Parrot your professor, and you’ll be fine.

Tip #4) Don’t do any more work in Legal Practice than you absolutely have to. This will make it harder to practice law (at first) but that will sort itself out in time. For now, ignoring Legal Practice will give you more time to work on raising your 1L GPA or having fun - and you’ll need more time for both. (I’m assuming here that Legal Practice is graded pass/fail, as it often is).

Tip #5) Above all else, do what works for you. At this point in your academic career, you hopefully know how you study best. Just do that. Don’t let law school freak you out - it’s not really any different than any other type of education.

For example, one semester I literally never went to class - my Professors had written the textbooks in each of my classes, and I could get everything I needed for the exam by reading that. I learn mostly by reading, so that’s what I did. This strategy would terrify most 1L’s, but it worked for me: my grades that semester were excellent. (Of course, this was after my 1L year, when I had gotten the law school basics down cold. I don’t suggest that you skip all of your 1L classes).

Tip #6) Join a study group, or at least make some good friends. Friends and study groups are similar in this respect: they give you human contact. This will help you to stay sane, and being sane helps improve your GPA much more than a little extra studying will.

Almost as good, your study group and your friends will likely share their outlines with you, and help you to find outlines from previous semesters. And they’ll give you someone to bounce your ideas off of. So spending time with other law students will help you to improve your legal reasoning quickly, and having fun will improve your GPA. Take the time: it’s worth it.

Tip #7) 2L Year: Game the system. Find Professors and courses that routinely give higher-than-average grades, and take as many of these as possible. Look for small classes and seminars, as Professors tend to grade these sorts of classes favorably. This is by far the most important tip I can offer for long-term grade success.

Tip #8) If you get pass/fail credits, use as many of them as possible during the first semester of your 2nd year. When you’re interviewing for jobs, you’ll need the extra time. Trust me. Take the whole semester pass/fail, if you can.

Any pass/fail credits that remain after the first semester of your 2L year, you can save for your 3L year (when your motivation for grades is likely to sag) or you can spread them out evenly over your remaining semesters, thus reducing your average credit load and hopefully increasing your grades here and there. It’s up to you.

Tip #9) Don’t take law school too seriously.

Have a backup plan. If you fail out, maybe you’ll work in a bookstore: That would be fun, right? Or maybe you’ll move to China and teach English. Whatever. Knowing that you have an exit strategy in the event of total disaster will help you to relax about your grades a little more, which will, in turn, increase your chances of getting higher grades.

“Only when true peace of mind is achieved will desire and grades become one.”

Tip #10) Finally, take the time to have fun. The truth is that once you figure out the system, most law school exams can easily be taken with only a rudimentary knowledge of the law. Perspective is much more important than being able to cite that obscure case by name.

So enjoy your classes. You’ll be surprised at how quickly law school is over, and - believe it or not - you’ll miss it when it’s gone.