Law School Keyboard Shortcuts

1L Week 2 - if only reading burned calories 

52 pages just for Civ Pro and another 22 pages and those briefs for Property. And a research assignment and case briefs for Legal Research & Writing. All due tomorrow. Yeah my life revolves around reading, highlighting, and briefing cases. That's it. I think when people say that law school is hard, what they really are saying is that law school is very time consuming and requires more dedication than you'd like to put into school. 

In undergrad I got A's in without even opening my book, or only opening it the night before a test or two days before a final. In law school, you can't get around this because just like in Legally Blonde and The Paper Chase, a professor will usually just pick a name and have you talk about what the reading was about so there's no way to BS your way out when they're asking you stuff like "what was the plaintiff's defense, and what was the defendant's argument against that? 

Faster notes

I've found that I like book briefing/ highlighting better because it's easier for me to just highlight as I go instead of rewriting and paraphrasing what the book says. If my professor asks what's the plaintiff's defense, I just look for what I underlined in pink. And for the defendant's argument, I look for what's underlined in baby blue. This is easier than awkwardly skimming through my note's for what I wrote about them.

I can't tell if I'm getting more innovative or just more lazy, but I'm really working to streamline my note-taking process because when you have this many pages to read on a Wednesday you kinda have to get a system down so that you don't waste hours writing down what you just read. I've fallen victim to the Apple cult, and it's really helpful to have my laptop and phone on the same page. What I did was on my phone go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement and set up some shortcuts that sync to my laptop. Or on your laptop, go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Text and add them there. All I have to do now is type the shortcut and press space and my word pops up. And although I have "dd" to say defendant, if I type a word that has that in it like "add," it won't do it. It's the little things that really help. I'm sure I'll add lots more, but here's what I have so far:

ac - appellate court
amt - Amendment 
atty - attorney
bc - because
bt - between 
cl - common law
cm - criminal
cn - Congress 

cr - copyright
cv - civil

dd - defendant
fed - federal
exec - executive
gr - general rule

gov - government

hs - hearsay
info - information
jd - judicial
jt - judgment 
jx - jurisdiction 
kk - contract
litg - litigation 
lege - legislature
mgr - majority rule
mnr - minority rule
neg - negligence
njc - injunction
pj - personal jurisdiction
rap - rule against perpetuities

reg - regulation
rs - Restatement Second
sc- Supreme Court
sg - something

sof - Statute of Frauds
sol - statute of limitations
st - state
sm - statement

smj - subject matter jurisdiction  
tc - trial court
tt - testator
wt - witness

also, here's some built-in shortcuts
∆ - option + J on a Mac/alt + 8710 on a PC
π - option + p on a Mac/alt + 227 on a PC
 § - option + 6 on a Mac/alt + 0167 on a PC

The Bar has an expensive cover charge

Yesterday, we had people from the Texas Bar come talk to us about submitting a Declaration of Intention to Study Law. I didn't expect to be filling this out so early, but the way they explained it to us is that they do this so that if you have any problems you can get them fixed before you apply for the bar. The application seems pretty daunting considering that you need rec letters and everything. Oh and it costs a nice $190 so that's cute that I have a month to come up with that. I know I keep going on about money, but I swear that every time you turn around in law school there's another fee for something somewhere. 

2 week milestone!

But hey, it's ok because I've made it a full two weeks and only cried once! And that was because I was homesick and missing my old school. Luckily though, this weekend is a 4-day weekend and just so happens to be the weekend before I turn 23, so that's enough for my best friend to come visit me so I'm super excited. Having four-day school weeks is really nice because I get done with my Tuesday classes and realize that I'm halfway done for the week. Then I get done with my Wednesday classes and just have one more day left. Any I spend all day Thursday telling myself that I just have to make it until 2 and then I'm home free :D

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