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Resource of the Day: The Bluebook Online

Today's resource of note is the interactive online version of the gold-standard citation tool The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation.  Not only does the Law Library & Technology Center keep several print copies of the current edition in Reserve readily available for patron use (see Novacat entry for holdings), the LLTC also maintains an organizational subscription to online versions of the 18th (2005) and 19th (2010) editions. 

Easy to navigate and updated to reflect immediate changes, the online Bluebook provides users with great search functionality and allows them to bookmark often-used sections.  To learn more, visit http://www.legalbluebook.com/Public/Tour.aspx.



Access is restricted to Shepard Broad Law Center faculty, students, and staff.  Please contact your friendly neighborhood Law Librarian for the login details.

Law School Exam Tips: A Followup

As a follow-up to my post about exam tips, a quotation from an article about law school education I had intended to use to introduce my previous blog post:

"Studies have shown that the best way to learn is to have frequent exams on small amounts of material and to receive lots of feedback from the teacher. Consequently, law school does none of this."

 -- James D. Gordon III, cited in Lynn C. Herndon, Help You, Help Me: Why Law Students Need Peer Teaching, 78 UMKC L. Rev. 809 (2010).

Law School Exam Tips

Two 1Ls here at NSU asked me the other day for tips for dealing with exams. I felt like I didn’t have a lot of insight. Law school was a long time ago for me, and I didn’t deal with exams too well myself.

So I consulted my awesome colleague Becka Rich, the NSU law library’s new Reference/Faculty Services Librarian. She provided some links and some advice, which I am passing on here.

First, some blog links to blog posts about exams.  Most of the posts (the first post is a collection of links) are very short, so don’t stress over reading them:

CALI’s Law School Exam Advice Post -- CALI gives a list of links to essays and podcasts on how to do well on both essay and multiple choice law school exams.  There’s also a lot of great advice from good sources linked to.

A Common Law School Exam Mistake -- The Volokh Conspiracy blog is helmed by a number of very down-to-earth law professors.  This post talks about how to organize your exam answers and how not to organize them.  If you’re only going to read one link, Becka suggests this one.

Law Career Blog’s Exam-Taking Advice:  Law Career Blog provides a list of their own best advice and a couple of other links. Very short, but helpful.

Lawyerist’s Tried and True Advice for Law School Exams: This is a round-up of their best posts on taking different types of law school exams.

Jurist’s Law School Exams page: The Jurist has a round-up of advice from law professors while noting that the best advice on your exam will come from your professor.

Beyond IRAC: Law School Exam Taking Tips (Law Profession Blog):  Advice from a law professor grading exams on how to write law school exams.  

University of Washington Law Library Law School Exam Page: Includes a bibliography of exam prep sources.

Law Crossing: Grade A Advice on Acing Law School Exams:  A recent grad shares law school exam tips.

Becka also said that candy and toys (which she and Carol Yecies, library associate director, both have) are useful if you need to sit and play for a minute. “But in all seriousness.... Tell them to take a deep breath, if they’ve been paying attention all semester it’s not that bad.  Eating and sleeping and showering are as important, if not more so than studying.  Get some exercise.  I meant it about the sleep.“

So, break a leg on your exams--and don’t stress or obsess!

Advice for visual learners

If your strongest learning style is visual, take a look at this post from the Law School Academic Support blog about which published study materials provide visual learning resources, as well as other resources and ideas for transforming your own notes and outlines into formats you can make the most of.