Demystifying the First Year: A Guide to the 1L Experience.

Demystifying the First Year of Law School: A Guide to the 1L Experience provides law students with explicit frameworks for reading and analyzing court opinions in all first year courses. Using hypothetical classroom dialogues, the book explains how these frameworks will help student understand and participate in classroom discussions, answer questions on exams, and use the skills learned in the first year when representing clients in practice.

Unraveling the mysteries of the first year of law school, authors Moore and Binder provide

• clear definitions, along with concrete examples, of the two types of legal issues typically addressed in court opinions
• illustrations of the six types of arguments routinely used by courts, lawyers and professors to resolve legal issues. These illustrations should help students understand a court's rationale for its decision and help students make legal arguments on exams and in practice
• a straightforward explanation for the use of the question-and-answer format in first year classrooms, with numerous illustrative examples of hypothetical in-class dialogues
• a step-by-step approach for briefing court opinions in preparation for class, along with a companion website with illustrative examples of case briefs of court opinions in subjects addressed in first year courses

Written by top scholars drawing on their experience as authors and educators, Demystifying the First Year of Law School: A Guide to the 1L Experience, gives the benefit of experience to the uninitiated. It's ideal as a companion to any first year course, as a text in a legal methods or academic support course, or as background for a law school orientation program. A Teacher's Manual is available at www/aspenlawschool.com/books/moorebinder.

* This book is also available in eBook format at the Kindle Store

Chapter 1. Introduction

Part I: Legal Rule Application

Chapter 2. Legal Rules, Legal Categories, and Issue Spotting
Chapter 3. Issue Spotting in a Rule Application Case: Illustrative Examples
Chapter 4. Six Types of Legal Arguments Commonly Employed in Rule Application Cases
Chapter 5. Reading Rule Application Opinions in Preparation for Class: Preparing a Case “Brief”
Chapter 6. Rule Application Opinions in the Classroom: Facts, Issues, Arguments, and Legal Rules
Chapter 7. Rule Application Opinions in the Classroom: Critiquing a Court’s Arguments
Chapter 8. Rule Application Opinions in the Classroom: What Constitutes a Holding
Chapter 9. Rule Application Opinions in the Classroom: Making Arguments to Resolve New Issues
Chapter 10. Rule Application Opinions: Classroom Dynamics and Note Taking

Part II: Legal Rule Creation: Creating Broadly Applicable New Legal Rules

Chapter 11. Reading Rule Creation Opinions in Preparation for Class: Preparing a Case “Brief”
Chapter 12. Rule Creation Opinions in the Classroom
Chapter 13. Rule Application and Rule Creation in a Single Opinion

Part III: Arguments Revisited, Judicial Decision Making, and Client Counseling

Chapter 14. Arguments Revisited
Chapter 15. Choosing Between Competing Arguments: The Subjective Nature of Judicial Decisions
Chapter 16. Helping Clients Make Decisions: Arguments Beyond the Court Room