Law School Lingo

All the words and phrases you should know before you start law school.

• LSAT: Law School Admission Test
• 1L/2L/3L: “L” is how you refer to your year in law school, so for example, if you were in your first year of law school you would say “I’m a 1L.”
• Outline: Outlines are a condensed and organized version of your notes from all semester for a course. You create the outline yourself and there is no set way to do it, everyone has their own style. They are not required or turned in. Depending on the class and the law school, you may or may not be able to bring your outline into the exam with you. If not, it is more of just a study tool.
• Cold Call: When a professor cold calls, she is calling on students at random to answer her questions. She may ask you about the cases you were assigned to read or make up a scenario and ask you what the legal outcome would be. Cold calling is a very common method in law school lectures, you can read more about it and my tips here.
• Gunner: This is probably our only real slang term! A gunner is basically a student who sits in the front, raises their hand a lot, and is a bit of a teacher’s pet. Usually it carries a negative connotation. Used in a sentence: “Omg, did you hear Sally in class today? She is such a gunner.”
• OCI: On Campus Interviewing. This is where a lot of offices come and interview law students for internships and jobs all at one time at your law school, and there is usually a bidding process involved in securing interview time slots. At my law school, the participating interviewers are mainly private law firms, with some government and nonprofits there as well. A law student will typically participate in OCI at the start of their 2L year in hopes of getting a position for the summer after 2L, (“2L summer”).
• Big Law: Law firms that have over 500 employees and multiple offices are categorized as “big law” firms. Anything smaller than that is a mid-sized or small firm. and the really small specialized firms are called “boutique” firms!
• Externship: An externship is basically an internship but done during the school year and usually in exchange for academic credit.
• LRW: Legal Research & Writing. This is a course you typically take in your first year.
• Case brief/ “briefing a case”: A case brief is basically your notes on a case you were assigned to read. Almost like a book report summary. Common elements of a brief are facts, procedural history, issue, analysis, holding, rule. These briefs are for your own personal notes. They are not assignments/turned in.
• Quimbee: Quimbee is like Sparknotes for law school, but it is a paid subscription. They have case briefs, animated videos for course materials, and practice exams, among other things. My main tip with Quimbee is not to use it to get lazy and skip readings. Use it as a supplement to your reading to check your understanding and make sure you didn’t miss anything important!
• IRAC: Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion. This is the basic structure of how law student format their essay responses on exams.
• Lexis/westlaw: Lexis and Westlaw are two big legal databases that you will have access to in law school and this is where you will do a majority of your legal research and access cases.
• Supplements: Supplements are books with course material that you can buy, rent, or check out from the library. They are “supplemental” to your course material and textbook. If you aren’t understanding the course material the way the professor presents it, it is best to get your hands on a supplement to see if you can learn it from there. My favorite supplements are from “Examples & Explanations”.
• Hypo: Hypothetical. A made up scenario or story that you professor will ask you the legal outcome of based on the things you learned from reading cases.
• Issue spotting: Issue spotting is when a student uses the facts in a fact pattern (hypo) to trigger a discussion of the relevant law in the course and analyze that issue and its outcome. If a student misses a major issue in the fact pattern, they will lose points on the exam. A typical law school exam will be one long hypo with many, many issues to spot and analyze.
• Racehorse exam: Many law school exams are racehorses, meaning they are designed to take up until the last second of exam time and usually there are more issues to spot and discuss in your essay than there is time to. Doing practice exams can help you with mastering how to type out rules and issues quickly for these types of exams!
• MPRE: Multi-state Professional Responsibility Exam. An exam you need to pass to become an attorney in addition to the bar exam. Read about it here.