Here is my final post offering advice to incoming 1L's. Use what works for you and ignore the rest.
1.
Use commercial outlines along with your assigned reading to figure out things you don't understand along the way. It's much easier to go into class with some idea of the subject matter you were supposed to have learned than to try and learn by listening to other people being pummelled by the professor's questions.
2.
Listen to everyone's advice, then decide what works for you. There will be tons of events and lectures in the fall on what to do to succeed in law school. I got some really great advice that way and some advice that I knew I wasn't going to take. (For example: I had a professor tell me that I wasn't going to succeed in law school unless I typed out briefs, but I stuck to the multi-colored highlighter system because I knew that that was what would work for me.) I'm sure that every piece of advice I decided wouldn't work for me, worked just fine for someone else. It's all about knowing yourself.
3.
Do things besides studying. It will make you feel like a real human being.
4. During study period,
make an exam study schedule. Decide what class or classes you're going to study for each day and what you plan to do (i.e. take practice exam or look at flashcards). You don't have to stick to it exactly, but it helps to insure that you study an equal amount of time for each class. (Don't make the mistake of studying for a class until the exam then moving on to the next class unless your exams are perfectly evenly spaced).
5.
If you sign up for Barbri, do so at the beginning of the semester so you can use their study materials for exams. At my school, we had multiple choice on each exam, but most professors didn't have available practice questions. I found that the Barbri exam software was very helpful in that respect. If you don't want to sign up for Barbri, then just ignore this. There's really no reason you have to.
6.
Actually write out practice exams. If the professor has sample answers available, compare them to what you wrote. Professors tend to have a style of exam answer that they prefer-- by modeling your answer after the sample answers, you're insuring that your exam is in their preferred format.
7.
Don't wait til study period to put together your outlines. Outlines are a good way to put together all of the information in a class and figure out what you don't understand. If you don't realize that you have no idea what the parol evidence rule is until a day before the exam, its probably too late for you.
If you don't have your outlines done by the beginning of study period, use someone else's outline or a commercial outline and start doing practice exams. Having the perfect outline will not translate to a great exam grade unless you have lots of time to study it.
8.
Figure out your professors buzzwords. There are certain things that your professor will bring up over and over again. (For my torts professor, it was public policy arguments. For my crim law professor, it was figuring out which mens rea applied to each part of the statute. She really liked the phrase: "What does this say about our criminal justice system?") Those things will most likely appear on the exam. Once you've figured out what they are, prepare for those types of questions. Slip in your professor's favorite phrases or methods of analysis if they are relevant.
9.
Resist the urge to compare yourself to other people. Just because the guy next to you has a 50 page outline done a month into the semester doesn't mean he is going to do better than you. He could have written 50 pages of absolute garbage. I chose to just be optimistic and believe I could do well. After all, in a bell curve, someone has to get a good grade. Why not me?
10. Don't get carried away with your outline. An outline helps you condense the material so you can actually learn it for the exam.
If your outline is way too long to memorize, your just going to have to make a shorter outline, which takes more time. I kept my outlines to 30 pages or less because I knew I could reasonably memorize that much information. If you can realistically memorize more, than go for it.
