Advice for future Law student

rc28

Hello, I just accepted Law in Trinity and was wondering whether anyone on here could give me some advice.
Firstly, is there any way I could prepare for the course, ie any recommended books I should be reading?
What kind of lecture hours will I be looking at and when will I find out the timetables?
Where would be the best place to buy law books and do I need stationery like folders etc?

I would be very grateful if somebody could help me out, cheers!

Brian

Try reading some John Grisham. Yeah... other than that I can't really help you, besides guessing that most of this stuff that all us 1st years are worrying about will be sorted out in the freshers' week time period.

Awayindahils

rc28 wrote: »

Hello, I just accepted Law in Trinity and was wondering whether anyone on here could give me some advice.
Firstly, is there any way I could prepare for the course, ie any recommended books I should be reading?
What kind of lecture hours will I be looking at and when will I find out the timetables?
Where would be the best place to buy law books and do I need stationery like folders etc?

I would be very grateful if somebody could help me out, cheers!

Ok, I don't do Law, but chill out.

(i) Its the summer. You're going into first year. Do nothing.

(ii) 8 hours with tutorials/seminars AFAIK

(iii) Law books are very expensive, and nearly always have to be bought. Most people get them in Hughes and Hughes or Waterstones. The ones in the library tend to have pages missing (I know this as a politics student trying to find jurisprudence articles) or sometimes you can get them in the SU book shop.

(iv) In my experience stationary is a personal preference thing. It's not like school were different teachers want a hard back notebook/ringbinder for you to write/keep your notes in. You'll get formatting guidelines for your essays.

Sisu

You'll get a lot of information about the course and what is expected of you during Freshers' Week. You'll also get your timetable then (and you will be able to access it online after you are set up on the computer system). You will have just eight hours of lectures per week (two hours each of Legal Systems and Methods, Torts, Constitutional and Criminal). There'll be about a little over a hundred students in your lectures. These will probably be in lecture theatres in the Arts Block or at the science end of college. You'll be expected to take notes in them either on paper or with a laptop - I don't know which is more common now. A good set of notes makes life much easier when it comes to studying. You don't want to be reading long cases without knowing what principle you are meant to be getting out of them. Some of the lecturers expect you to have done reading from the reading list before each lecture and will ask questions in lectures; others won't. There is a module in legal research and writing that you have to do as well. You'll also have seminars in each of your subjects - but that's just six seminars in each all year; they start around week 4. The seminars are about ten students in a small classroom in the Law School. You're expected to have done reading for them and answer questions. Apart from class hours, you'll be expected to do a lot of reading - text books, cases and articles, in the library. Really, most of your time is yours to organise as you wish (including plenty of time to do extracurricular stuff, get involved in sport or societies). You will have assignments to do for seminars, and a small number of big essays (maybe one or two per subject). All the exams are at the end of the year. If you've done your reading during the year (keep on top of your reading lists as you get them) then the exams shouldn't be too stressful. There is a low failure rate in law. Even though lots of people don't keep on top of their workload during the year and cram at the end, it mostly works out ok.

You aren't expected to do reading before starting the course, and even if you started reading the textbooks, they wouldn't make as much sense as they will after the lectures (IMHO lectures are very important in studying law). If you want to do something before you start, you could just read the papers and think about your opinions on legal-type issues that come up (eg crime, human rights issues etc).

You'll get reading lists when term starts. Law books are shockingly expensive (they can be hundreds of euro each). If you get a second hand one, check it isn't too old - law is always changing. You can check out the noticeboards in the Law School for second-hand books for sale, and the Law Soc will probably have a book sale early in the year. If you don't buy books, they do have them in the library. Law students have a bad reputation for stealing/vandalising books, but most of what you need will be available. A lot of articles and cases will be available to you on internet databases, but you'll be told about that. Kelly's Irish Constitution and McMahon and Binchy's Torts book will probably be very useful for those subjects.

If you want to get a sense of what it will be like in advance, you could call in to the Law School (which is in the middle of college, House 39) and have a look around. Maybe you can get a copy of last year's timetable in the office there to get an idea of what it might be like (though of course it can change).

irishpacker

Ah law, what everyone in my family did except me! My brother recently qualified as a soliciter for one of the big firms in Dublin, he did law in trinners too. Only took him 8 years to get qualified, and you cant really do it any quicker than that! So good luck!

rc28

irishpacker wrote: »

Ah law, what everyone in my family did except me! My brother recently qualified as a soliciter for one of the big firms in Dublin, he did law in trinners too. Only took him 8 years to get qualified, and you cant really do it any quicker than that! So good luck!

Thanks for those words of comfort.


Sisu, thankyou so much for going to the bother of writing all that- it was very helpful.:)

Jimdw

rc28 wrote: »

Hello, I just accepted Law in Trinity and was wondering whether anyone on here could give me some advice.
Firstly, is there any way I could prepare for the course, ie any recommended books I should be reading?
What kind of lecture hours will I be looking at and when will I find out the timetables?
Where would be the best place to buy law books and do I need stationery like folders etc?

I would be very grateful if somebody could help me out, cheers!

Study hard, work hard.
I'm not studying law by the way.

Boston

Thats a brilliant way to get your email privileges removed.

Jimdw

Boston wrote: »

Thats a brilliant way to get your email privileges removed.

Well what cha gonna do!

rc28

Jimdw wrote: »

Well what cha gonna do!

I read your post before it was edited down to nothing! If I get desperate I suppose I'll go find out the email addresses of complete strangers.:D

-aboutagirl-

With regards to buying textbooks, I wouldn't really bother unless you're totally opposed to spending time studying in the library. They are incredibly expensive and unless you get a good second hand deal (the current edititon), I wouldn't bother, especially for the first two years.

There's a good supply of the major texts in counter reserve and I never had a problem getting the text I needed except at exam time. I bought some books but it ended up being a waste of money as for the most part, I rarely used them - they're quite heavy to be hauling around campus!

LoveLifeLaw

Kelly and the Constitution is best for Constitutional law , Mahon and Binchy for Torts Law and the a Criminal Law text book .Lectures are 8 hours per week plus another 8 seminars.

qz

LoveLifeLaw wrote: »

Kelly and the Constitution is best for Constitutional law , Mahon and Binchy for Torts Law and the a Criminal Law text book .Lectures are 8 hours per week plus another 8 seminars.

That's a little misleading. It's 8 hours of lectures plus another 2 of seminars each week, so realistically 10 official hours per week.

Spike440

William Binchy's advice to me was to do a 9-5 taking a break for lectures, tutorials and lunch. Of course I didn't heed it.

8 hours of lectures - don't miss them and keep all your lecture notes in order and in a folder for each subject. You'll be grateful when exams come around.

Approx. 2 seminars a week. I skipped a lot of seminars and regretted it. Seminars are pretty much guaranteed exam questions. Do all the reading for them starting with the articles, book chapters and then cases.

As for buying books, if you can afford it, it's worth it. Only buy books that are recent (i.e. published 2-3 years ago) and even then I'd only buy Roundhall books. They'll be a great help if you plan on going into practice eventually.

Learn how to find things in the library as soon as you can. It was fourth year before I learned where some things were and it would have made things a whole lot easier if I had known earlier on. Get a good idea of everything available in counter reserve. Lecturers will also photocopy articles on reading lists and leave them in folders in counter-reserve. You can search for the article on the system and get the folder. It beats going looking for the journal.

Also, get to know how to use the websites (Justis, Westlaw, LexisNexis) early on and your life will be easier.

As for studying, the big problem most people have is how to read cases effectively. Try not to take really long notes which is just the whole case in shorthand. Most cases should take up about 1/2 an A4 page with a quick outline of the facts and the reasoning for the decision (for each judge). You'll only ever need to write 10-20 lines about most cases in an exam question (except for the really big ones). Some cases (like TD) are incredibly long but can actually be condensed. Read all the text but only make notes on the main points.

Work through the reading lists by reading the chapter in the textbook (say 1 hour), then the articles and cases. If you get one topic done per day you're doing well. Try to stay up-to-date because if you fall behind catching up on back work is tough.

You'll get a 2.1 if you reproduce the lecture notes. You'll get higher if you can refer to the main caselaw, say what a few of the commentators think about the issue and then give your own opinion. Independent thought tends to be rewarded, or at least thought which shows a broad understanding of the issues.

If you want to do a little reading beforehand, Doolan's Principles of Irish Law will give you a good grounding but the course assumed everyone is starting from scratch.

Your subjects will be:

Constitutional - rely on textbooks and main cases - a broad understanding of Constitutional principles will let you answer any question. I got good marks for answers which referred to only one or two cases.

Criminal - Heavy caselaw but no deep reading required. References to cases in answers will usually only be 2-3 sentences unless it's a really big case (e.g. DPP v. Kenny). There is usually one main article for each of the criminal topics which will outline everything you need to know.

Torts - Heavy caselaw but no deep reading. Again you just need to know the facts and what why the decision was made. Learn the tests from the seminal cases off by heart. Again you only really need 2-3 lines per case but you do need to know a lot of cases for each topic.

LSM - I think it's changed a lot since I did it but there's not a lot of caselaw. Just rely on lecture notes and textbooks (McMahon and Binchy).


It's a great course and I really enjoyed it. Good luck!

Crania

That was really helpful Spike440, thank you!

rc28

CoolCiaran wrote: »

That was really helpful Spike440, thank you!

+1
That was excellent Spike440, thanks!