Legal Research

Professor David Post from Temple Law has a few more useful tips for first-years in his post at Volokh Conspiracy, and his most important tip, IMHO, is don't blow off your first-year legal writing and research class!  More from Professor Post: 

You?re probably taking some kind of ?legal research and writing? class during your first year, and, if you?re tempted to blow it off (as you may well be), my advice to you is: Don?t. In many, many ways, what you learn there is more important than what you learn in any one of your doctrinal classes ? there are a lot of terrific lawyers out there who never really understood (and still don?t understand) property law, say, or constitutional law, or contracts. But there are very few terrific lawyers out there who haven?t mastered legal writing and legal research. (And consider this, too: all of those judicial opinions you?re reading in your ?doctrinal? classes are themselves the output of judges (and their law clerks) engaged in the process of ?legal research and writing?; the more you understand about that process, believe me, the better you?ll be able to understand those opinions and, therefore, the better you?ll be able to understand the various doctrinal subjects you?re encountering). If I had the magic bullet to get you to write well I?d reveal it to you, but I don?t. Legal writing, in my view, is one of those things (like playing the piano, or juggling, or carpentry) that you get better at by practice, and only by practice.

Same thing goes for legal research -- you won't learn how to become an efficient, effective researcher unless you practice and ask lots of questions about your research.  If you use your time in law school to refine your legal writing and research skills, it will make the first years of practice much less stressful.